Page 899 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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On a question about burglary, to quote selectively a set of figures about a decrease in car theft is designed to be misleading. It is designed to tell the Assembly that we have this good news. This is the Mr Berry line; it is all good news - "Don't you worry about that. We are going to sort this out because we have good news to tell you". The fact of life is that there is not much good news. The good news is just not there. You should be telling the Assembly, Minister, with all alacrity and all the forthrightness you can muster, that the situation in the ACT as far as crime is concerned is a very serious one and it needs to be addressed by this Assembly, and by this Government, as a matter of priority and urgency.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the second matter on which the Opposition bases its motion of censure concerns comments made later in that same question time by the Minister concerning burglary rates in Australia. The Minister was asked in the question in the first place about burglary, and he said in answering that question:
... the simple fact is that housebreaking increases around Australia.
If we thought he might have been generalising here, meaning increases generally, he was more specific and went on to say:
... 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.
That is what he told the Assembly. He used that assertion to create the impression that our burglary rate in the ACT, a rising burglary rate - I think there is no dispute about that - stood favourable comparison with what was happening with burglary in other States. Those assertions, Mr Deputy Speaker, just were not true. Members have seen the figures produced by the Australian Institute of Criminology - I will table them if necessary - which indicate that burglary generally in Australia is coming down. The national rate of burglary has declined. (Extension of time granted) The decrease in burglary across the whole country between 1990-91 and 1991-92 was two-and-a-half per cent.
That is in contrast to the comment made by the Minister that housebreaking is increasing around Australia and that every government is facing increases in burglary. That simply is not the case. There are some States where there have been increases, but not comparable with the ACT's increases; in some States there have been small increases. On the other hand, there have been States where there have been quite sharp decreases. There has been a 1.73 per cent reduction in New South Wales, a 6.77 per cent reduction in Victoria and a 15 per cent decline in South Australia. There has been a very large reduction in burglary rates in those States.
The point is that burglary in the ACT is rising, and it is rising, on the most recent figures, 13 per cent a year. I acknowledge at this point that there are no figures available for the Northern Territory, so it is conceivable that we might not be the worst; but unless the Northern Territory comes in very badly we are going to be far and away the worst State in Australia. Our rate of home burglary in the ACT per head of population now exceeds that of New South Wales. The Minister has worked very hard to argue that our comparison should be with places like New South Wales and Victoria. Well, he has finally succeeded. We now have a burglary rate in the ACT which exceeds that of New South Wales, and that is a matter, I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, of disgrace.
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