Page 1445 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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have to have police there anyway, so you are not going to diminish the need for all three services to appear on those occasions. The question has to be asked: Is that the most efficient arrangement of services?
I have concentrated principally on police rescue services. It is the matter about which I am most concerned. But I do not think that is the only area in which there is a series of questions to be asked about the best arrangements for future provision of these services. Road rescue is not the only area in which the police rescue service is engaged, as we have already heard today. There is cliff rescue, building rescue, river rescue, snow search and rescue, bush search and rescue, animal rescues, aircraft emergencies, natural disasters, including storm damage and flooding, police operational support, for example where a person attempts to commit suicide, gaining access to buildings or cliff tops or bridges or building roofs, inside locked premises and so on, recovery of bodies after a disaster or an accident of some kind from waterways, cliffs, bushland, railways, buildings, et cetera. Sometimes there will be suspicious circumstances where a special police role is necessary. There will need to be searches for offenders in bushland, scientific or forensic evidence, drugs, et cetera. There will need to be lighting for crime scenes, protracted accident investigations, demonstrations and searches, emergency power, supplying generators for police stations and command posts during emergency incidents, disaster planning, crowd control, police welfare, specialist equipment, and all sorts of training in techniques. Those, I understand, constitute the bulk of the work done by the police rescue service.
The savings have not been demonstrated, and I do not think the questions I have posed today have been satisfactorily answered. I believe that it calls into question the direction the Government is taking and provides us with the opportunity of calling for an independent and full inquiry into emergency services in the Territory. I have included in the motion police, fire, ambulance and road rescue services. Clearly there is an agenda. It might not be the Government's agenda, it might not be the Minister's agenda; but there is clearly an agenda, and it is at least partly concealed from the public of the ACT. We need to establish the clear basis on which we proceed, whether down the path of that agenda or otherwise. I think that cannot be done without a full, independent inquiry.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.57): Mr Humphries argues the case for an independent inquiry into police and emergency services in the ACT. We will be voting on this in due course, and I must say that I am rather disappointed that Independent members who may be voting are not present. If they were going to vote in favour of Mr Humphries's motion premised on the arguments Mr Humphries has made, they would be very misinformed. Mr Humphries's whole argument is based on a false premise, a fundamental error in reading a Grants Commission document that a more seasoned campaigner like Mr Kaine would not have fallen into.
Mr Humphries says that when we look at the Grants Commission report it shows that our expenditure on fire is 216 per cent, therefore we have an inefficient fire service and we should be doing something about it, and why are we giving additional jobs to this inefficient service? I grant you that, if we were spending twice as much as we should be on fire and only 116 per cent as much as we should be on police, that would indicate an inefficient fire service and something should be done. Mr Humphries, read the small print. It is a very good idea before one opens one's mouth. That reference in the Grants Commission report is
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