Page 3553 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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qualitative analysis being undertaken by a private consultant, Frank Small and Associates, as part of a two-year study. To have cuts come at this stage, in the middle of a transitional review of both the costing and the functions of the police, is extraordinary.
The community policing strategy aimed to increase the feeling of safety and security in the community by giving priority to crime prevention and detection programs as well as maintaining a rapid operational response capability. A crucial element in this strategy is improved interaction between the police, the ACT community and the Government. Sadly, those links have been broken.
The results of the consultant's survey to the end of May this year highlighted various weaknesses which were being progressively addressed by the police. These included directive patrolling, where police would walk the streets, introduce themselves to residents or shopkeepers and invite comment on likely crime concerns. Also, police were encouraged to attend meetings and discuss matters with specific groups of people. I want to place on record our admiration for the respect that the police officers give to those many community groups whose meetings they attend. The police increasingly are attending business places and are gaining increasingly the respect and the cooperation of small business, in particular, in this town.
Other matters the police were looking at included the specific concerns of people, including the aged and women. The police, in that process, were enhancing their customer service approaches, such as shopfront policing sites at Civic, Belconnen and Tuggeranong. The police trialled in my time as Minister two mobile shopfronts so that they could target particular trouble spots. The police did not seek to reinvent the wheel, but chose to build on successful programs operating elsewhere in Australia and overseas.
We believe that modern policing requires an alternative to arrest in dealing with indecent language or similar charges relating to small-scale public disorder. The move-on power was a limited way of giving support to this notion. It has not received the support of the Labor Party and I believe that that is one aspect of their poor relations with our police force - their failure to put ideology aside in protecting the public of this city.
Mr Acting Speaker, I believe that the Government is to be condemned for the manner in which it has gone like a bull at a gate in cutting the police budget. Surely, the correct way to go was to press the Commonwealth for more contributions for its national policing functions. I wish to say to the Labor Party that the community will continue to support the Australian Federal Police. The Rally, in particular, will bring forward reforms to law and policing
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