Page 4032 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 24 October 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR COLLAERY: I withdraw the suggestion that Mr Berry drinks milk, Mr Speaker.
Those statistics do reflect a lot of property offences when many of them are derived from vulnerable workday practices, such as leaving keys in the ignition, and the rest. The fundamental issue that society needs to face is how to reduce crime itself; how to do away with the factors that lead to the drug addicted people making all those property and burglary attempts; how we deal with domestic violence, violence in the home, and the rest. They are the issues that community policing will tackle. They will make people feel secure. The first survey revealed that 57 per cent of citizens feel the police and citizens have a joint responsibility for preventing crime.
MR STEVENSON (11.48): Mr Collaery makes a valuable point on what we really need to look at in preventing crime. Certainly the community needs to be involved. No police force ever has or ever will effectively handle the problem of law and order without community support, and anything we do to encourage that will be valuable. There is a far more important aspect of this entire debate. It is the key to the debate, which basically has not been covered. People become criminal when they have no sense of responsibility; when they have no understanding of ownership of property; when they have no real understanding of the rights of others. So, when the opportunity comes they do what is good for them as they see it at the time.
Where does someone learn responsibility; where does someone learn values; where does someone learn to be a useful member of the community? I think we would all understand that it is not so much that we learn these things as adults, but that we learn them when we are young. I use the word "learn" advisedly. It is not what we are taught in educational establishments so much, but it is what we learn, and we learn majorly from observing the actions of others. You can teach people in the schools various things and you can say various things in parliament, but what people really take heed of is the actions of those people in authority. We will never handle the problem of adults having irresponsibility, of adults taking criminal actions under certain circumstances, if we do not instil in our young people a sense of being part of society, a sense of responsibility, an understanding of ethics and integrity.
It is unfortunate that our society does not give attention to strengthening the family unit and individual responsibility; rather it gives attention to what are called rights but it basically ensures that people do not accept their rights. When we teach that people have rights without a greater teaching of their obligations and responsibilities we are creating the criminals of the future. We say to people that they should demand their rights, that they have the right to a job, for example, without giving them an understanding that that right would put on someone else's shoulder an obligation to employ
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .