Page 4029 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 24 October 1990
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establishing policing in this Territory, which is the long-term financial relationships and the essential decision on what resources are put into police and what resources are put into crime prevention. Mr Moore's motion can be of long-term and lasting benefit to this Territory. I commend it to all members.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.38): I did not find much I could disagree with in what Mr Connolly said. I think it is a question of timing. I will come to that. Mr Moore had foreshadowed this motion to me some month or two ago. I did not move to, in any way, head it off or put it on our agenda. It is clearly a necessity that at some stage this Assembly connect the community with these issues through its democratic voting base.
What I say is that we have the review of the police instrument itself coming up in December. We have the Grants Commission inquiry hearings also just before Christmas. We should have the Grants Commission recommendations in March. As a tactical matter, I am not going to play our hand here to the Grants Commission. I am prepared to enter into any briefing arrangement the Opposition wants on all these issues to do with policing; but, as a tactical matter, I think it would not be politic or useful at this stage to have us doing an independent inquiry where the Grants Commission will see all our arguments, probably in advance, will be able to second guess a number of issues, and will know how strong or - and I stress - weak some of our evidential arguments are. The fact is, as I have said, that the police are spending a year in a goldfish bowl. We have, as Mr Connolly indicated, broadly supported a policing arrangement. We are yet to find out whether the allocation of resources, and the prioritisation, is what we want, and whether it is efficiently distributed. We are yet to resolve formal asset transfers from the Commonwealth on a number of assets and facilities. This motion is simply premature. I was hoping that Mr Moore might hold off till the New Year.
Mr Moore: Avoid everything; that is the story, is it not?
MR COLLAERY: Certainly, as I indicated in the earlier debate, there is no group that has more avoided biting the bullet on school closures than the Labor Party. They are posturing around now with a further conference policy.
Mr Moore: They bit the bullet and made it quite clear.
MR COLLAERY: I will talk about that later. I think they were shown up this morning. I do not want to get partisan on these issues, but they were shown up badly this morning.
Mrs Grassby: The people from Weetangera told you outside.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Grassby, your volume is overtaking this chamber too often. Please keep it down. Please proceed, Mr Collaery.
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