Page 4076 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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than anything is the message as far as our police go. A very important comparison can be made between these cuts to our police force and the cuts that were made to the Fire Service. There were very similar cuts to the Fire Service budget, but its overall budget is only $15m - much smaller than for the police.
If we were to follow the argument of the Police Association in relation to the cuts being concentrated in a small sector of their budget, even if we fail to accept that Mr Connolly's position has changed and that he has allowed some move to staffing cuts, we would still be in a situation to compare the reactions of the fire union and the police union. In that context it is appropriate for us to look at yesterday's editorial and see that they have got it right. The police union has simply gone too far.
The assertion in the matter of public importance put by Mr Stevenson that the action taken by the Government to cut funding to the ACT police force is unwise and does not have the support of the people or the police is simply not the case. It would be unwise to leave any sector of the community without a share of the burden of the cuts. If we were to decide that some section of the community could appropriately be exempted, we should be looking at the areas that would provide us with crime prevention, and that is the issue that Mr Collaery prevented going to a committee.
Those areas of crime prevention would start with education and the social issues. That is where we should be concentrating an increase in funding, if we are going to put an increase in funding anywhere. To give credit to the police force, as I have said again and again, they have put more effort than almost any other police force in Australia, as I understand it, into crime prevention. That is a credit to them and it needs to be recognised. The reality is that the Police Association has overstepped the mark on this issue. They have lost credibility with the people of Canberra by their excessive stance on this issue and, when the compromises were offered, by failing to compromise.
More importantly, their comment that the Minister in charge should "butt out" brings me back to the statement Mr Collaery made that we ought to be negotiating a new agreement. If we have a chance to negotiate a new agreement, we should be renegotiating back to the original Colin Winchester idea and looking for a contract police force. The ideal, as far as I am concerned, would be a contract police force arranged with the Australian Federal Police.
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