Page 473 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
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said. The bag contained about $230 - virtually all her fortnight's pension, which she had picked up that day.
The first and foremost duty of any government is the safety and security of its citizens. We in Canberra can have the best hospital system in Australia, but that means little if we cannot protect our citizens' safety to walk about the streets of their city.
Mr Wood: Perhaps we have not got the best police system.
MR STEFANIAK: Perhaps we have not got the best hospitals either. The massive increase in crime, especially violent crime, has become one of the main issues concerning the Canberra citizens in the last couple of years. It touches us all. Over one-third of all Canberra houses have been broken into and our shops, our streets and our bus interchanges and bus stations are no longer the safe places they were 10 years ago.
The level of street crime, such as assaults, offensive behaviour, malicious damage, property and muggings, which are assault and robs, has increased manyfold over the last decade. One need only look at statistics kept by the Australian Federal Police and listed in its annual reports to see this. For example, in 1979 there were 336 assaults and 1,207 cases of malicious damage, and some 11,000 crimes reported all up.
In 1984 there were some 374 assaults, 2,316 malicious damage cases, and indeed crimes had increased by about 5,000 all up to 16,000. In that year the Police Offences Ordinance was largely truncated and the police lost most of their street powers. In 1987-88 there were 678 assaults and 3,220 malicious damage cases. That is almost a doubling of the number of assaults and a 50 per cent increase in malicious damage, two of the most common offences that appear before the courts as a result of street crime.
Police powers to confront and combat crime in this area have been whittled away in the last 10 years. As I said the Police Offences Ordinance was truncated in 1984. The remaining provisions of that were transferred to section 546 of the Crimes Act, which deals with offensive behaviour but which has limited application to any street crime apart from that. Police can act only in certain circumstances in relation to street crime and they can act only after a crime has been committed. In 1987 the last available power in relation to the possibility of stopping crime before it started was deleted from the Gaming and Betting Act, and that Act had some limited application, at any rate.
The whole idea of a move-on power is to stop crime before it happens. The whole idea is to nip crime or a potentially dangerous situation in the bud. Acceptance of this Bill will lower the amount of street crime; it will
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