Page 382 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 1990
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participant, in my view. What Mr Wood is proposing is a mechanism for achieving a bipartisan approach to the policing of the ACT. This is entirely consistent with the approach that we were looking at when we were in government and, in fact, the question was raised with Mr Kaine and Mr Collaery of a working party to look at policing of the ACT. It has always been our intention that this should be a bipartisan matter. As Mr Wood has said, the committee system offers opportunities for broad consultation with the community.
I am aware of all of the bureaucratic machinery that is in place, to which Mr Collaery has referred, but I do not believe that that offers the community at large an opportunity to make their views known. We are also very aware that the issue of policing the ACT is very complex. There is the whole question of the kind of policing the Canberra people want, and again Mr Collaery has touched upon that. We have the Federal Police here and I believe that we are to an extent locked into the Federal Police arrangements, but we need to have a very firm say on what we want them to do, what nature of policing we believe the community needs.
There is also the question of cost, which is a very big issue. It is important that we try to contain the costs into the future for policing of the ACT. It is equally important that the Canberra community understands the issue of cost, and the people of Canberra are able to say that they are willing to give priority to this or that aspect of policing and prepared to see their rates spent on it and the cost borne by the community.
There is a further complexity in the whole issue which concerns the employment provisions, the arrangements that will be made for the police who are to serve the ACT community. That is an issue that has been very contentious recently and that needs to be resolved before any arrangement is made for ACT policing. It is an issue on which the police themselves must have an opportunity to have a say. That is their industrial right, I believe, and it is a further complexity of the whole question of policing in the ACT.
Another good reason, I believe, for moving towards this bipartisan approach is that a number of members of this Assembly have already made a variety of pronouncements about the police in the ACT. I would refer members to previous debates on the need, or the lack of need, to increase police powers; to public pronouncements by some members of assertions about police brutality and so on. Those sorts of positions taken by members of this Assembly may - and I stress the word may - diminish the appearance of an objective approach towards the policing needs in the ACT. I think that objectivity is a very important aspect of the arrangements here.
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