Page 3457 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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This matter is not just about actual offences. It is also about the perception of an affront to public safety in Civic. People, sometimes unreasonably, fear certain things. For example, graffiti is a factor in public safety. People do not feel safe about walking in an environment which is dirty, dark and graffiti-ridden. For those reasons the Government attacks a problem of unsafe environments by dealing with things such as graffiti.
As I indicated, constituents have expressed a number of concerns to us. One person rang my office in the last few days and talked about an incident last Saturday night in Northbourne Avenue near the Private Bin in which his 17-year-old son was assaulted by a kickboxing gang. It was alleged that a crowd of about 200 people actually gathered and stood around watching this incident; but, of course, there were no police there. Eventually one of the son's friends called some other friends who belonged to a soccer club and they came and assisted. A melee broke out. There was fighting going on. His son ended up with a chipped tooth and another boy had his nose broken.
This constituent approached the police on Sunday morning about safety in Civic and was told, to his surprise, "There were only three patrol cars in the Civic area on Saturday night. There is not enough money in the budget to do what is needed. We have lost control of the situation in Civic. The streets around Civic are unsafe and there is an incident in Civic almost every night of the week". It is not unusual, apparently, for crowds of 50 or 60 youths to surround a police car and rock the car and spit on it while the police are inside it.
The sort of behaviour we are talking about, he went on to point out, is not just confined to people who are in the very young age group, the 15 to 18 or 15 to 21 age group. He told my office about the case of a 28-year-old schoolteacher who has been in a coma for the last two-and-a-half weeks after being bashed at Manuka. That person was just going about his business at the time of the bashing. Obviously, as the weather gets warmer we are going to see a rising problem. This person suggested that if some of us walked through Civic late at night - I certainly do not do that very often, and I do not know whether any of us here do - it would be a valuable way for us to feel just what things are like in Civic in that sort of environment, particularly on a Friday or Saturday night.
I am heartened, as I said, by what the Government, and the Minister in particular, had to say about this matter. I hope that we will see more cooperation from the Government. If it is an offer that is genuinely made, it will be reciprocated by the Opposition. The Minister recently was kind enough to make available a briefing by Frank Small and Associates on community surveys of policing. I could not be present at that briefing and I have not received a copy of the survey report and I am told that I cannot get hold of a copy. If the Minister is anxious to make sure that the Opposition takes part in dealing with this problem, he might like to consider making that report available.
I am also extremely heartened by the Minister's comments about reinstating the offence of public fighting. We have argued before about offences and about increasing the powers of police, but the situation is a serious one. The Minister and those on this side of the chamber would agree that we really cannot afford not to act on this question. In those circumstances, looking at additional powers
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