Page 4065 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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That view was reflected by the Police Association. The Police Association were saying on Friday of last week or the week before that they would be happy if we broadened the basis of cuts, and they wanted me to chair the meeting. The Government, consistent with the approach we have taken from day one and the approach we took in opposition, said, "We will listen to the reasonable views of the community; we will listen to reasonable views of the Opposition". We had hoped that we could achieve this in savings only in the discretionary budget. The association wants us to broaden the basis of savings; the Liberal Opposition wants us to broaden the basis of savings. We will broaden the basis of savings.
The association said that they wanted me to chair meetings and broaden the basis, and I said that we would do that. That resulted in an extraordinary statement on ABC current affairs radio that the dispute had been resolved and everybody was happy. But by Monday morning we had got to the position where a spokesman from the Police Association was saying, "Mr Connolly should butt out. We do not want you involved at all. On Thursday we wanted you to chair talks. On Monday we do not want you involved at all".
We had agreed with the proposition put forward by the association and by Mr Kaine, and Mr Kaine has been consistent throughout this debate and last year. We said that the Police Association and police management should work out ways of achieving policing for this Territory within the constraints of a budget of $53.4m, which is a mere 2 per cent less than last year, in a context where they have grown by 47 per cent and where the Grants Commission last year said that we were spending $10m more than we should on policing. We wanted to take $1.2m off their budget, and we had achieved an additional Commonwealth benefit that was worth something like $3m.
We said that we were about halfway towards getting where we should be. We had wanted to do it, initially, without looking at jobs. I think that was a sensible proposition and, again, it was consistent with the overall approach the Labor Party has taken of avoiding job cuts to service delivery areas. The union did not want that; the Opposition did not want that. We said, "Okay, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Just show us a way, negotiate a way of achieving policing within those constraints".
Despite the rhetoric, despite the nonsense, that is essentially what happened. Management and union sat down and talked. We have agreed to broaden the basis, although I think that when it is announced tomorrow afternoon you will find that we will not be losing much in the way of police numbers and that the Government's original position - that savings could be achieved without cuts in numbers - will essentially be borne out.
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