Page 246 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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When the ACT budget faces difficulties, as we know it does, as this Government is achieving savings across the board, what does the Liberal Party say we should do about the police budget? I quote: "The budget for policing must be reduced along with all other budgets". What we have done with the police budget is achieve the 2 per cent savings that were required of all budgets.
Mr Deputy Speaker, for all the froth and bubble, for all the hysteria, for all the posturing and parading in front of public meetings, for all the whipping people into a frenzy and getting them to ring my office with tales of gloom and doom, the fact remains that the leader of the Liberal Party says, and says again, that the police budget needs to be treated like any other budget. I must, as I have done before, give Trevor Kaine credit for being honest and credible and consistent on this. It would be easy for Mr Kaine as leader of the Liberal Party to take the same sort of cheap and opportunistic political stance that some of his lesser Liberals have adopted and run around and promise that the Liberals would increase the police budget. When I made my comments in question time today he nodded his head vigorously; that is, that he expects budget savings to be achieved. The leader of the Liberal Party maintains the consistent line that the police budget should be treated like any other budget.
That really means that members of the community who are being whipped into a frenzy by the Liberal Party are being deceived, because the Liberal Party has made its position clear repeatedly at the level of the Liberal leader; that is, that the strategy that the Government is adopting of requiring the police to live within a budget cut that is the same as the budget cut of other agencies - - -
Mr Humphries: That was not what he said, no.
MR CONNOLLY: I will say it again. These words are etched on my heart, Mr Humphries. What Mr Kaine said is that the budget for policing must be reduced along with all other budgets, consistent with what this Government is doing. Madam Speaker, is that a responsible or irresponsible thing to do? Just because the Leader of the Opposition says that we should do it obviously does not mean that the Government thinks it is appropriate. In fact, in most cases it would be cause for the Government to think that there was something wrong with our strategy. Is it responsible for us to be looking at the 2 per cent savings in the ACT police budget? What do we spend on policing? We spend $53m on policing in this community. That is this year's budget allocation. That will be reduced next year by 2 per cent. We may also achieve a transfer of that burden because some of it may go to the Commonwealth, along the lines I referred to today.
How does that compare with police expenditure in other States? The document that I rely on and that members or anyone interested in researching this issue would rely on is, of course, the latest update of the Commonwealth Grants Commission - this is last year's update - which shows at page 261 that the national per capita expenditure on policing is $124 per head. At page 374 the ACT expenditure on policing is shown as $169 per head. That figure is about the same; if anything, it has gone up a little when you divide the community of the ACT into $53m. So $124 is the national average; the figure is $169 in the ACT. Other States clearly do not compare. We spend a third more for every man, woman and child on policing in this Territory than any other part of Australia.
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