Page 4963 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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Victoria, Queensland, South Australia or Tasmania. We have more police per person. We spend far more per head on police than anywhere else, again apart from the Northern Territory, which has those extraordinary challenges of diverse population and distance.
The Labor Government's decision with respect to policing was the correct and responsible one. The Labor Government also took the correct and responsible approach throughout the industrial dispute of saying that essentially the way a budget cut is to be delivered is a matter to be resolved between police management and the police union. Incidentally, to the extent that Mr Stefaniak is acting as a spokesperson for the police union, good luck to him. I respect any member who gets up in this place and puts the view of a trade union. I respect the right of the police union to run a campaign. That is their duty, in effect - to represent the views of their members.
We always said that the way those cuts should be delivered was to be resolved between police management and police unions. Lo and behold, after a lot of rhetoric and a lot of froth and bubble, it has all resolved itself. Everybody is back at work. Those cuts are going to be delivered. You are not going to see any dramatic impact on police delivery. There has been a fundamental furphy about the whole thing - and that is an appropriate word.
This is an issue on which there has been a deafening silence from the benches opposite, although there should have been congratulations for the Government. We successfully negotiated with the Commonwealth for an additional 42 positions to be paid for by the Commonwealth this year. That is worth about $3m. That means that we can cut $3m from what we spend this year. We spent $54.6m last year; this year we are spending $53.4m. If you chop the $3m off, your budget cut is really - - -
Mr Stefaniak: That is because they gave you $57m.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Stefaniak again says that they gave us $57m. They did not give us that. They gave us a general purpose Commonwealth grant that was slashed to the extent of about 20 per cent, as the Chief Minister has repeatedly made clear. Mr Kaine made it clear last year in that article that we were never again going to get a tied police grant. There was no continuing commitment beyond this year, said Mr Kaine in August last year, and he was right. That is why the decision we made this year, it is clear, was the decision that a Liberal government would have made if it were still in power.
There has been a lot of froth and bubble about this. This amendment, if it is passed, is part of the froth and bubble. To some extent it is ineffective because one of the issues, the shopfront service, as we made clear in the Estimates Committee, no longer looks as though it is likely to be a savings target for this year. I can assure all
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