Page 2748 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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that is, we believe that this is a bad and unnecessary law. This is not to say, and I would vehemently reject any assertions to this effect in this place or elsewhere, that the Government is in some way soft on crime or condones street violence or does not want to adequately back up the police force.
Our record on those issues is clear and our record of appropriately supporting the Australian Federal Police is clear. We believe that the way to ensure the security of the citizens of Canberra, the way to make progress on criminal activities and crime, which is ever rising throughout all jurisdictions in Australia, is to move more strongly in the way of community policing and concern for victims' rights and crime prevention strategies. We believe that arbitrary powers are totally contrary to that strategy.
It is often claimed by those who support the move-on power that its success is demonstrated by the statistics showing the number of persons moved on compared to the number of persons charged and successfully convicted. These very figures are included in the Australian Federal Police report on the move-on powers, which I circulated to all members the day I received it. While to Mr Stefaniak they suggest that the legislation is working, to members on the Labor benches they suggest that there is a real problem with this legislation. The figures show that the move-on powers have been used on 145 occasions, involving some 2,060 persons. That resulted in 19 arrests and 15 convictions. In other words, 0.7 per cent of persons against whom the move-on powers have been directed are being convicted of an offence.
Mr Stefaniak says that that is a good thing and shows that people are not being brought before the court. We say that it is a bad thing. We say that it means that over 2,000 Canberrans - and overwhelmingly they are young Canberra citizens - have been brought into unnecessary conflict with the police and have left those situations feeling aggrieved. Given that 0.7 per cent of those against whom the power has been directed have been convicted, 99.3 per cent of those persons have been left with a feeling of aggrievement, have been left with a feeling that "I was doing nothing wrong and the police came along and told me to move on".
These are the very young Canberra citizens we are trying to encourage, with the community policing campaigns and Neighbourhood Watch and concerns for victims' rights and crime prevention, to have a community oriented view of law and order, a view that the police are an agency of the community rather than an agency of the state directed against them, trying to inculcate an approach to law and order that is more satisfactory. Yet we use against them powers that can be seen to be arbitrary.
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