Page 4956 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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That the following words be added to the question: "noting that this amount is inadequate in that funding the Police shopfront services and the Crime Prevention Program cannot be provided for from within Division 130 and the Assembly believes they should be re-instated in the public interest".
For the Government's information, it would cost only $20,000 for the crime prevention program and $51,000 for those very effective police shopfronts, which provide a focal point and a police presence in major shopping centres.
The Attorney said that police can wander around on the beat. If you have a shopfront, police can operate out of that and go out on the beat. In fact, apparently, they go out quite a lot because a number of people have said to me, "We can never find them in there". At least it is a place where people can go, and police can provide a very important presence around the major shopping centres, where there are a large number of problems.
About the only area the Attorney has not cut on the operational side of policing seems to be the very effective pushbike squad. I commend him for keeping that initiative going; it was one of the Alliance Government's initiatives. The police have a very difficult job. (Extension of time granted)
I do not think there are any other areas of government service, with the possible exception on occasions of the fire brigade, where the employees of a government agency are subject to severe physical harm and injury, and in the last three or four days we have seen about a dozen police injured. Seven or eight of them have had limbs broken as a result of doing their duty - their very hard duty - in the face of very difficult circumstances, and I commend the way they go about their job in difficult times.
I was out at Aidex today; I was proud to be there. I think it is very important for Canberra. I spoke to a large number of police who were in the vicinity. In the circumstances, they seemed in good spirits; but even they were appalled at the amount it was costing the ACT taxpayer for them to perform their role. I think it is essential that they receive the full support of whatever government is in power and have the necessary tools and resources that are needed to do their task.
Penny-pinching in this area costs lives. That really is the bottom line. Police have been killed in the execution of their duty. Most of us troop out once a year to the Anzac Chapel at RMC for a quite moving ceremony dedicated to police officers who have died in the line of duty.
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