Page 4080 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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... the success or failure of the authority in meeting its objectives is not susceptible to evaluation in quantitative terms.
The parliamentary joint committee went on to observe that the traditional measurement of the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies - for example, their clearance rates, their rates of crime solution, their percentage of reported crimes solved, et cetera - was inapplicable because the authority deals with unreported organised crime. I can recall being told what the estimated turnover of illegal SP bookmakers was, and I am sure Mr Stefaniak does too. But that figure, as we all know, can be only speculative, and in this whole area of organised crime much of the spectrum analysis is speculative.
Before I pass from the PJC's report entitled An Initial Evaluation - and I stress that, because it is early days still - I should mention with approval that there is an urgent need for basic research on illegal activity in this country so that public policy decisions on strategies to combat organised crime can be taken at a more informed level. The parliamentary joint committee applauded the efforts in this regard of the Australian Institute of Criminology, as does the Residents Rally.
Recently I wrote to the institute, in response to calls by them for suggested areas of new study, and I suggested that concepts of organised crime require revisiting. For example, is it organised criminality for public officials wilfully to neglect turning their minds to any inquiry into what would be the infrastructure cost to the community of allowing a major development to take place?
Does that activity go beyond mere cupidity when the community is forced to pay for traffic engineering, parking and other services, and suffers as a result of environmental problems of developments that had - I stress this - predictable outcomes? The wilful neglect and failure to pursue these outcomes by public officials, through too close a personal and friendly relationship with developers, in my view is an appropriate area for study and for the National Crime Authority to take on board.
The Australian community - we taxpayers - have contributed so much towards the millions made and lost by some of our greatest entrepreneurs in the foreign borrowing market. Have any officials been wilfully negligent in surveilling those activities? Is that an area for inquiry? In other words, at what level does the reckless indifference of public officials become criminal?
Look at the great cost to this country of what those megaentrepreneurs have done to us and our balance of payments. Who was negligent? Was it more than negligence? Was it wilful neglect because they did not wish to put their minds to an issue, because they were too close to
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