Page 4072 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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I predict a significant and uncomfortable increase in complaints against police for a year or two, despite the consultative and communication processes undertaken to implement and advertise the Priority Response System.
There is a comment by the Assistant Commissioner which clearly engages, as anyone who has taken a contract on board will know, the provision in schedule A of the agreement that the police be responsive to community needs in the provision of police services. Clearly, the assistant commissioner is providing in this letter the evidence that he can no longer be as responsive, or responsive at all in certain categories, as was expected under the contractual agreement we made to use the AFP. We could have used another police force, but we used the AFP. The Dawson letter provides evidence of a clear intended rupture of the provision in schedule A that I have mentioned.
We then move to schedule B of the agreement, again carefully negotiated, and I want the Canberra Times and the leaders who contributed to the editorial to digest these words. They will understand the difference between informed and detailed journalism and the type of sententious comment we saw yesterday. Schedule B sets out the goals and objectives that we required of the AFP. They include, inter alia:
through appropriate response planning to enable a quick and effective response to serious crime;
I accept that Assistant Commissioner Dawson is not referring to the commission of crime. This is preceded by these words:
by use of the patrol officer as the cornerstone of operational policing;
Clearly, the cornerstone has been removed from policing in this Territory. There is a clear concession about the problem with vehicles and patrols, particularly in the Tuggeranong area. That again is a rupture of the agreement.
We then turn to schedule E, which was mentioned by my colleague Mr Stefaniak. It sets forth the financial basis for the agreement, which was again carefully negotiated between our treasuries. This document was produced by and between the Finance and Treasury officers. There was no mistake about it. It provided:
The Commonwealth gives a commitment to the ACT that special transitional problems encountered in the provision of policing will be taken into account in determining general transitional arrangements for 1991-92 -
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