Page 476 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
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The loiterers use the skid ramp, seats provided by the government and a ridiculous semi-secluded square reserved as 'open space' to harass the public. The victims are mostly the elderly and children: other shoppers are abandoning the centre in droves.
We have endured this situation for years and have had no response to our requests for help. The situation is now quite desperate. Why should our shoppers be spat upon and their cars urinated upon?
We seek your immediate and effective response to these problems.
Police patrols have been stepped up there, I understand, but they can only do that to a certain extent. Police cannot be everywhere at once. We would probably need to swear in half the Canberra population as special constables adequately to control that if we simply wanted police at every potential trouble spot. That letter perhaps can be tabled, Mr Speaker, as I have read from it.
I would also indicate to this Assembly that, due to my previous civilian employment as a prosecutor for nine and a half years, I am probably more aware of this problem and have seen more of it than other members of this Assembly. Indeed, a lot of the faces I have seen over the years in Garema Place and the Woden interchange I have also seen in court, both adult and children's court, for serious offences which were committed in and around those places, ranging from assault and malicious damage, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and in one case manslaughter.
What I would also say, as I have said earlier, and it might be of some interest to the members opposite, is that by having this power and by stopping crime before it starts, you decrease the amount of cases coming before the courts, you decrease the number of people charged with serious offences, and that surely might have some good effect on some of the people who currently are coming before the courts quite regularly for serious offences.
There is a second prong which has been used by opponents of this legislation, and that is fear of police abuse of the power. Firstly, I think when one looks at the Australian Federal Police and the ACT Police before, one realises that fear is totally groundless. Some people appear to have a paranoia about the police abusing this simple, commonsense power. I regard that, as I am sure do most members of the community, as a slur on the AFP. The AFP does have an excellent record, and I defy the opponents of this Bill to provide this Assembly with instances of abuse of the move-on power as the ACT Police have had in the past. I think the facts really do speak for themselves, especially when one considers the increase in crime since the repeal of police powers in 1984.
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