Page 3314 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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Crime in Civic
MRS GRASSBY: My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Minister inform the Assembly of any steps he or the police have taken in regard to the recent reports of incidents of crime in Civic and, in particular, Garema Place?
MR CONNOLLY: I thank Mrs Grassby for the question. The Government certainly is concerned at a couple of recent quite vicious assaults on young people in Garema Place. We are aware that there does seem to be a trend towards more violent, assault-style behaviour in the inner city area. In order to address what appears to be an emerging trend, the Government has taken some positive steps rather than mere rhetoric.
On Thursday I was absent from this chamber, as indeed was my counterpart Mr Humphries, attending a meeting in Melbourne on crime prevention - the inaugural meeting of the Australian Community Safety Council - in which a number of interesting ideas were put on the table about how other cities and other communities have dealt with similar problems. Crime in the inner city - the area where the nightclubs are, where the pubs and the discos are, where young people congregate - is not a unique Canberra problem. It is a problem around Australia and around the world.
Solutions that have been taken in other parts of the world - the knee-jerk solution of more police and tougher penalties - have been shown not to work. In the United States they have massive numbers of police and massive police resources. They have the highest rate of imprisonment in the world at the moment, and historically are exceeded only by Stalinist Russia. They have massive success in containing criminals, but no success at all in containing crime, when you look at the safety of the inner cities. That track does not work. So, the alternative is working together with the relevant community to build a safer community and reduce crime that way.
We heard on Thursday some very interesting developments in South Australia, where a safer Adelaide program has been running for some time. I have organised a meeting for Friday, which is being convened by the superintendent in charge of the city district and which will get together the police, the Civic traders, the Garema Place subgroup of traders, the Australian Hotels Association representing the discos and the licensed outlets in the city, relevant areas of my department, ACTION, which has a lot of involvement because of the interchange, and City Services, to come up with some ideas to make Civic safer.
We have in the past 12 months taken new initiatives with the beat squad. They spend a lot more of their time now on patrol, rather than being in the little kiosk. It is quite rare now to see police officers in that little kiosk in Garema Place; they are spending a lot more of their time out on foot patrol. Those sorts of initiatives have been positive, but we do need to do more. I am confident that by getting the community together at an early stage we can reverse this, what appears to be, emerging trend of crime in Civic and produce a safer community for us all.
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