Page 905 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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In relation to housebreaking, I have never tried to get away from the fact that we have a problem with housebreaking in the ACT. We are not alone on that. If you run through those figures you have taken, and I am happy to take these figures of yours as the basis for the debate, across Australia over a three-year period you see a range of figures. We have an increase in that three-year period of 8.9 per cent. A number of States have much larger increases. Some States - New South Wales and South Australia - have a decrease, and I commend them for that. We can start to see a decrease in the ACT if we change the way we, as residents, approach household security. We simply have to get to a situation in the ACT where we have window locks and deadlocks fitted. If we try to live in a fool's paradise - that we are a country town and that the police will solve all our problems - we will continue to have increasing levels of housebreaking. We cannot rely on the police alone to solve the problem of housebreaking. We have to have a community response to it.
Madam Speaker, this censure motion, which was emblazoned on the front page of the Canberra Times on Sunday in relation to motor vehicle theft - that I would be censured for misleading the house in relation to motor vehicle theft - has been a fizzer because the facts in relation to motor vehicle theft show clearly that that offence is running below previous levels. We have turned the corner on motor vehicle theft and that is a good result, but Mr Humphries cannot bring himself to concede that and continues to try to twist the figures to suggest that there is an increase. There has been a decrease. He then tries to mount an attack on me in relation to housebreaking. We have a problem with housebreaking. It is a continuing problem. We have seen over the years in Canberra that we sometimes go up and we sometimes go down, but in recent years we have shown a steady increase. Other States have shown increases but are starting now to show some decreases, which is a pleasing thing. We can do that, too, if we take a community approach to crime prevention. That is why I originally got onto motor vehicle theft figures. I was not intending to come in and make some sort of statement about motor vehicle theft; I was trying to put in context a sensible and rational approach to the problem of housebreaking.
You, Mr Humphries, and the Liberal Party, have never come up with a sensible suggestion in relation to this. You rant about fights against crime; you rant about law and order, as your party does around Australia. You never come up with a sensible approach. The sensible approach, Mr Humphries, is that we can get on top of housebreaking, as we have got on top of motor vehicle theft, if we toughen the targets. That was the point I was making in the debate and that is a point that sensible members, when they consider problems of crime and law and order, should direct their attention to.
MR STEVENSON (3.55): It obviously is not all that easy to follow all the statistics that have been given and the portions of the year they have been given for. One of the major difficulties we have, as Mr Humphries mentioned, is that we do not have the monthly figures. What would give the best indication is the monthly figures over the last two years, not just for six months of this year. The suggestion that they should not be published to burglars may have some credibility, although I did hear Mrs Carnell mention earlier that they were published in Neighbourhood Watch bulletins. I would certainly like to - - -
Mr Connolly: For individual suburbs. We let individual suburbs know what is happening from time to time, as other States do.
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