Page 896 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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There are two principal bases of this motion. One is that the suggested 12 per cent decrease was indicative of car thefts in the ACT, when it was not. The other is the assertion that ACT burglary rates were to be favourably compared with those of the rest of Australia, when in fact they were not to be so favourably compared. Madam Speaker, the Minister answered the question concerned last Wednesday in the Assembly. It was a question I asked him about burglary rates, but the answer, at least in large part, ended up being about car thefts, about which I did not ask. He said:
... we now have a 12 per cent reduction ... in the six-month period ...
The six-month period he was referring to was the first six months of this financial year over the first six months of the 1991-92 financial year. He built on that comment to say:
Car thefts are decreasing ... because we are toughening the target.
He also said, in answer to the supplementary question asked on that day:
... we are now joining the trend in New South Wales and we are actually seeing a reduction in car theft ...
That was a very clear statement, a very clear assertion by the Minister, that car theft was going down; that we had good news on the car theft front; that there was a general improvement in our position, not necessarily just related to two particular periods in which analysis was being made but that overall we had a good prospect of improving our rates of car theft. I would suggest to the Assembly that those assertions are not borne out by other information which has been published in the Canberra Times and which is still essentially undisputed, notwithstanding the press conference, which the Minister is aware of, given yesterday by the assistant commissioner, Mr Dawson.
Assuming that the rate of car theft for those two periods is accurate - as I say, I have not seen the basis of the Minister's figures, so we have to assume that the figures are accurate - then the question has to be asked, "Do those two six-monthly periods accurately show the picture for car theft? Are they accurate indications of what is going on?". We all know, Madam Speaker, that it is possible to distort, very easily possible to distort, the impression created by a particular set of figures by quoting from them selectively. To take an extreme example, if I were to find one month in a preceding financial year when there was, for whatever reason - perhaps it was very cold or something - a very high rate of car theft, and then for that reason in the succeeding year in that same month there was a very low rate of car theft, I could compare those two months and say, "Look, car theft has dropped. Aren't we wonderful? Look at the way these two months compare". That, of course, would be a nonsense.
What the Minister has done by comparing two six-month periods is, I suggest, equally nonsensical, or at least certainly a very poor way of approaching the task of working out what is actually happening with car theft across the Territory on a continuing basis. The six-month period can be misleading. The figures I have seen indicate that that first six months of the 1991-92 financial year experienced a higher than usual level of car theft.
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