Page 3450 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The costs of compensating for the rise in violence are increasing each year. Yet the police budget is reducing and there is little evidence that the police are able to restructure the force to provide a sufficiently high level of community police presence to deter crime. In times of recession the budget for policing must be reduced along with all other budgets, but at the same time more enterprising approaches to solving the problems such as those of Civic Centre must be developed. The Government must be innovative. Neighbourhood Watch has had a significant impact in the suburbs, and the introduction of the bicycle patrols in town centres has improved visible police presence notably. Similar initiatives are needed in Civic Centre.
Madam Speaker, it is not adequate to shift responsibility for curbing violence and drunkenness in Civic to the operators of nightclubs. If clubs are licensed and run in a responsible way, then the behaviour of their patrons once outside is no longer the operators' responsibility. The police and indeed individual members of the community have to pick that matter up. To avoid policing the problem and curing the ills that produce it is to encourage the vigilante approach that is increasingly advocated in our community. That is an unacceptable approach. The problem requires government action rather than community action.
Labor discounts strongly Liberal Party moves to deal with the problems, but the fact is that legislation to reinstitute some of the police powers of summary arrest may well discourage people from violence and vandalism. Legislation to increase the penalties for violence, together with increased application of those powers by the courts, may well discourage people from doing as they please, when they please, and to whom they please.
To some degree we appear to have an unhelpful community attitudinal problem concerning violence. Perhaps educational programs in schools and colleges should be focused more clearly on the development of socially responsible attitudes and behavioural patterns. Young people should not be left to grow up without guidance and without appropriate role models - with the belief that anything goes. Parents must be encouraged not to abdicate from their responsibilities for their children's behaviour. They should be persuaded that it is socially unacceptable for them to relinquish their responsibility in favour of some role model on television. Arnold Schwarzenegger may be entertaining, but the roles he plays are not admirable roles for our children or our young people.
Countering those models that accept violence and a disregard for the rights of others when they are in contrast to our own rights is difficult, but it appears that we have to confront that challenge. This Government has to confront that challenge. It cannot sit back and just let it happen. Spending money on counselling after the event may be beneficial in the short term to the individual victims or to the perpetrators of violence, but it will not lead to general behavioural change. Madam Speaker, it is behavioural change, attitudinal change, that is needed as much as stricter law enforcement and penal regimes.
I personally find it appalling that people would condone violent behaviour. Worse, I simply cannot understand people who stand by and let violent crimes occur without doing anything to assist the victims. There are reports of crowds forming to watch assaults or brawls. That kind of behaviour used to be sneered at in Australia as the degeneration of social life that occurred in places such as New York but never in Canberra. It is in Canberra now. Wider issues such as the planning laws that lead to concentrations in places such as Garema Place of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .