Page 2371 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 16 September 1992
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Whilst there may have been many causes the emotional impact of the recession, particularly amongst the young unemployed, cannot be discounted as a probable factor.
He also, I understand, ridiculed the suggestion that police efficiency accounts for increases of 122 per cent in just three years in prosecutions for drug offences. We know that that is just rubbish. We know that that is just an excuse grasped for by the Government. We should be looking at solutions to these problems, not scrambling for excuses.
Report after report produced in and for this Territory has pointed to increasing crime rates in Canberra well in excess of our population growth rate. The most recent AFP annual report is another source of alarm on this question. Between 1986-87 and 1990-91, reported offences increased as follows: Robbery, up 88 per cent; burglary of shops, up 75 per cent; burglary of homes, up 16 per cent; property damage, up 82 per cent; arson, up 285 per cent. We can make lots of excuses. None of these figures by itself proves a thing - I concede that. There is a very small number of cases of arson in the ACT each year. A small spate of cases gives a huge increase in the figures. By itself, none of these figures proves a thing; but collectively they spell big trouble, and the Government has to take the first step and acknowledge that big trouble.
Another source of concern is an NRMA report based on insurance claims resulting from burglary. That report indicated that burglary in the Territory had doubled since 1983. The figure was up 17 per cent alone in the 1990-91 financial year over the previous year. The NRMA report said that the highest risk postcode in the ACT equates with burglary rates in the twelfth highest risk suburb in Sydney. We might not be at Sydney or Melbourne standards, but we are catching up extremely quickly. The increase in burglary rates has occurred at a time when rates in Sydney and Newcastle, in fact, have declined. That has been a sustained decrease there. Police earlier this year reported that there were 1,200 burglaries in the first 12 weeks of the year in the ACT. That is about 100 a week. This compares with about 85 a week in 1990-91. It is an alarming trend, by any standard. There is no question that the ACT is experiencing increases in many crime rates well beyond our population growth rate.
We can argue about these statistics forever, but I want to relate a couple of matters which I have come across while talking about and looking at crime in our community. I toured the Lyneham shops some time ago at the request of one of the shopkeepers there, and I spoke to most of the shopkeepers in that area. Every single last one of them had experienced some problem with crime. Nearly all said to me that they wanted to see more police on the beat in that particular shopping centre. They all said that they had not seen police in their shopping centre recently and felt that the presence, the profile, of police there was too low. Nearly all had distressing stories about theft, vandalism, armed robbery or property damage.
One shopowner, a woman, had been confronted by a youth with a knife in broad daylight. She had been robbed, and the experience had left her so shaken that it took her a very long time before she could venture back into her own shop. Another constituent, this time a shopowner in Garema Place, reported that despite the presence of the police shopfront only a few metres from his own premises he has been continually troubled by criminal behaviour late at night.
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