Page 951 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 March 1991
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MR MOORE: I sat down merely to allow a member to take a point of order. You were saying "Order!" and I sat down to allow you to do that. I am certainly not finished my speech, Mr Speaker. It is highly irregular for - - -
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed.
MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is clearly the case that an Assembly committee would have the additional advantage of providing a look into the financial aspects as well as the policing aspects of this particular agreement. But what we are particularly concerned with is that financial aspect. We are certainly aware that the Grants Commission suggested that, as I recall, about $27m was the appropriate amount of money for us to be spending on police, according to the criteria it had set some years ago. It may well be that those criteria have entirely changed and $54m is the right amount of money to be spent. We do not know that. It is quite appropriate, therefore, for a committee of this Assembly to look into that matter.
I support Mr Connolly's call for the Attorney-General to give further serious consideration to this third aspect, this vital link of establishing an Assembly committee to look into policing in the ACT and its cost.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (3.41), in reply: Mr Speaker, I rise briefly to respond to Mr Connolly. I have no response to give to Mr Moore. As far as I am concerned, he is not worth commenting upon for the rest of the time he is in this chamber. Mr Connolly made some valid points. It is just a matter of timing, as I mentioned earlier. I remind him that the Federal Government still has overall statutory control of the AFP. There are some constitutional, legal and operational difficulties, in my view, at this time in having a select committee of this Assembly calling Senator Michael Tate's officers, in effect - not only his uniformed officers but also the civilian advisers he has in the Australian Federal Police - before this Assembly. They are issues that we need to resolve - - -
Mr Connolly: They cooperated with the Estimates Committee very well.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Connolly says, by way of interjection, that it operated well; but he well appreciates that it is an entirely different issue to talk about a select committee being established to examine, in effect, the Federal Government's police administration policies. There is a need - and we have faced it in another area recently - to work out how the Federal Government and the Territory Government, given the unique seat-of-government nature of the Territory, can get together where we have joint parliamentary interest in an issue that affects us both. I believe that we are going to see similar issues arise in the planning area, but that is not for me to comment upon here.
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