Page 247 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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Is it responsible to look for savings in the police budget? Perhaps if we were spending less than we should on policing, it would be irresponsible. Look at Tasmania. They spend $118 per head on policing. Perhaps if the Tasmanian Government were saying, "We have to look for savings in the police budget as with all other areas of government expenditure", it would be possible for an opposition to say, "Look, we are a State which is not spending enough on policing. You cannot look for cuts in that area. It has to be quarantined". But we are the jurisdiction which has the most dramatic expenditure on policing, higher than any State. We are exceeded by the Northern Territory, but they have peculiar problems of distance, scattered population and diverse major centres, and a particularly massive violent crime rate.
What about the numbers of police? Do we have enough police? Are we being short-changed on the number of police out there protecting the community? We had some rhetoric from Mr De Domenico. The Government's strategy about putting more police on the street was essentially about getting police out of the vehicles and the patrol cars and back on beat policing duties, and we are seeing more police on foot patrols around the city and around the suburbs. Our community policing caravan has been on point duty at various small suburban shopping centres. Our strategy is to get the police back on the street, back closer to the people.
Are we short-changing the community on numbers of police? I went through these figures the other day, but they bear going through again. Canberra, with a population of just under 300,000, has 699 as our police complement. Some of those are police support, but that is the same position in other States when you have a look at police complements. The Gold Coast, with a population of 273,000, has 427 police. It has a slightly lower population than ours, but that is its base population. There is always a very high tourist complement there. It is a notorious area for problems with certain types of crime, particularly narcotics crime. There are 427 police protecting a community of 273,000; we have 700 police protecting our community of 300,000.
We look at the Illawarra district with a total population of some 360,000 people. There are 465 police protecting that community. We look at the Newcastle district with a population of 313,000. There are 442 police protecting that community. So on any test this Government is providing this community with a very high level, a generous level, of expenditure per citizen on police. We are not short-changing our police force. We are providing for our police force at a greater rate than any State in Australia. We have more police serving this community than you would find in any equivalent-sized community in Australia. This community is well and safely policed. Mr Dawson repeatedly reminds the community of that. At his press conference the other day Mr Dawson made points very similar to the points that I make, but perhaps as Chief Police Officer he may be more believable to members opposite than I am in reassuring the community that Canberra is, and remains, a safe community.
As I explained to Mr Kaine, the recent changes to police rostering and duty arrangements were made to ensure that we bring that projected overspend around and come in on budget. Mr Kaine nodded vigorously - in fact, he interjected and said, "Yes" - when I said that I assumed that that was what he would expect a responsible government to do, to look at expenditure, to bring it in on budget. As Mr Dawson said the other day, even with those cuts this community remains safe and there has been no noticeable change in crime or criminality.
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