Page 3105 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022
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That is a woeful record from this government. A record that lies not with the police. It is not their fault. The fault lies solely with the government. The police are trying to do everything they can with the resources they are given. If you do not believe me, listen to what the frontline police, through their association, are saying. Let me quote from the AFPA:
Our members are burnt out. We are concerned about the welfare of our members. The ACT government spends the least amount on police officers in Australia.
Also this:
I would argue that ACT policing have been under-resourced for some time. The frustration coming from the membership at the moment is that ACT Policing is, let us face it, a pretty light on police force by Australian standards, and by worldwide standards.
And this:
The association has been continuously drawing the government’s attention to under-resourcing, both for staff and infrastructure, for a number of years.
The question we are asking, Madam Speaker, and the question the police are asking, and the question the public is asking is, when will this government start listening to the officers on the ground?
We can see the results in the work police now have to do, conducting record numbers of operations against repeat offenders. In fact, a new task force, that we have been talking about in the Chamber, has had to be formed to deal with this. It is called TORIC, the Targeting of Recidivists in Canberra. A recent report on TORIC outlined the offenders, and said, “Many are regulars on the ACT court lists, persistent bail breach offenders, and with a list of priors which would fill a police notebook. It is little surprise that breach of bail offences year to date in the ACT are running at an all-time high.”
And on bail breaches, another Canberra Times report stated:
At the current rate of bail breach arrests and charges by police - running at an average of more than two a day - that previous high mark will be exceeded by almost 30 per cent by the end of the year.
It is probably worth noting amongst those horrific statistics that in this Chamber this week the Attorney-General refused to have an independent review into bail. He thinks the system is obviously working so well. As I said, the current rate of bail breaches and charges by police are running at an average of more than two a day, the previous high mark will be exceeded by almost 30 per cent by the end of the year. In the same article, the Justice and Community Services directorate said it was:
… unable to generate any comparative systemic data, presenting the argument that it could not do so because the system it used was “very data-rich”.
Well it is simple. They want the facts; they need to talk to the police.
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