Page 743 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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MR CONNOLLY: As I was saying, car thefts are decreasing because we are toughening the targets. As I have said consistently, in order to reduce burglaries we have to toughen the target. As a community, we have to put deadlocks on our doors and use window locks. In New South Wales - - -
Mr Humphries: You are blaming the victims.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Humphries, the simple fact is that housebreaking increases around Australia. If you think that as a politician you can strut around saying that if the Liberal Party were in power there would be a reduction in housebreaking, you must think that the community is pretty thick. But, of course, that is what the Liberal Party thinks of the community. That is the Liberal Party approach. We can get on top of this problem of housebreaking only if we adopt the approach that as a community we have to get on top of it. That means toughening the targets.
As the police have consistently been saying as we run public education campaigns, we have to accept responsibility ourselves for housebreaking. NRMA figures last year showed that, whereas 40 per cent of Sydney households have deadlocks and window locks, less than 20 per cent of Canberra households have those simple precautions. Unless we as a community take those precautions, housebreaking will continue to steadily increase in the ACT, as it is in the rest of the country.
In order to reduce the rate of increase in housebreaking and ideally get to a situation where we actually get a decrease, we have to do with our households what we have done with motor vehicles, and that is gradually increase the level to which our households are immune to theft by taking precautionary measures. That is the answer, Madam Speaker. The Liberal Party strutting about on this and running campaigns with the Police Association saying, "The answer is more police dollars" is simple nonsense and frankly nobody believes it, because every government in Australia - Liberal Party, Labor Party, and National Party in the Northern Territory - has faced and continues to face steadily consistent increases in rates of housebreaking.
MR HUMPHRIES: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Will the Minister concede to this house that burglary increases in the ACT are running at approximately double the rate of increase in other States in Australia?
MR CONNOLLY: No, I will not concede anything that Mr Humphries is saying, without checking the figures. On the figures that I have seen - and I will research Mr Humphries's assertion and come back to him at a later date - what I will say is that the rate of increase in burglary in the ACT, like the rest of Australia, is something that we should be concerned about; but we should not be hysterical about it and we should not play cheap politics with it. The answer to housebreaking, like car theft, is to toughen the targets.
I was pleased to see on a recent police report that we are now joining the trend in New South Wales and we are actually seeing a reduction in car theft because the targets are becoming tougher. As a community, we have to do that with our houses. We have to get away from the mentality that we once had in Canberra, that we were a country town and we could leave the back door unlatched. Those days, alas, are gone.
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