Page 4006 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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Let us put this on the record: He is absolutely right. But he seemed to suffer from the same hearing difficulties that Mr Berry suffered from while being questioned about his budget. He did not answer the questions that were being asked of him on that matter. Rates of crime, Madam Speaker, are different from rates of increases in crime. It is very sad for the ACT's future safety record, I suspect, if Mr Connolly does not realise that there is a difference between those two matters. The rates of increases in crime such as break, enter and steal, robbery, motor vehicle theft and violence offences reported to police all rose considerably above the national average over the previous year's figures. Mr Connolly dismissed the trends shown over the period of a year, telling the committee:
We see it when you go year by year, but the pattern for most of ACT areas is fluctuation from year to year, which is why I say that the sensible thing to look at is trends over time.
"Trends over time" - is a very important phrase. As the committee report shows, trends over the past five and 10 years indeed show massive increases in rates of crime in the ACT. Let me give you some examples. The Minister said, "You cannot look at just the last 12 months". All right; we went back over the last 10 years to examine break, enter and steal offences. Those offences have risen by 139.2 per cent in the ACT, against a national average of only 36.3 per cent. In the last 10 years the national average for robberies has doubled, but in the ACT robberies have risen by a massive 366.7 per cent. These are the figures Mr Connolly tabled in the Estimates Committee, not my figures. That means, Madam Speaker, that for every extra robbery across Australia in the last 10 years there have been three-and-two-thirds here in the ACT. In the past five years violent offences reported to police have increased in the ACT by 75.26 per cent, while the national average has increased by 32.36 per cent. So, Minister, there are trends over time which prove that, while the ACT has among the lowest rates of crime, it is still recording the highest increases in the whole of Australia.
Madam Speaker, there are a couple of other things I will touch on briefly in the remaining time. The Attorney-General expressed surprise that some legal claims against the Government were being met by different agencies - in one particular matter, by ACT Health. I am pleased that the Minister acknowledged the need for some consistency in the handling of such claims against the ACT Government and undertook to take that matter on board. It would be helpful if we knew that the one agency was overseeing payment of very large sums of money on occasions by the ACT Government to claimants.
Members might recall also proposals to legislate to require government departments and agencies to pay accounts to suppliers on time or face penalty interest. At that time Mr Connolly said that there was not a problem with payment of accounts on time and that his advice was that accounts were being paid on time. In fact, he challenged me to find cases where they were not being paid on time. I had before me the responses of a great many local businesses which said that they, in fact, did have a problem with getting accounts paid on time, even where there was no dispute. I sought information from ACT Health, which from the information appeared to me to be the main culprit, and found that as of 30 June 1993 there were 11 accounts outstanding for a period of over 30 days, and those accounts were not disputed such as to have held up payment.
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