Page 322 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 1 March 1994
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Mr Kaine: If they take 4 per cent out of health it is just fewer beds and more on waiting lists, and that does not worry Wayne.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table that document I just quoted from.
Leave granted.
MR HUMPHRIES: The rug may be pulled out from underneath not just all police and citizens youth clubs in the ACT but practically all structured interface between the AFP and Canberra's youth. It is an appalling decision and I hope that it will be reversed. Mr Connolly has prided himself on preventative policing and community safety initiatives. He deserves credit for having taken those initiatives, but he will get no credit if what he has provided with one hand is taken away with the other. There will be no pat on the back for redesigning bus interchanges or adopting country-style policing if at the same time he pulls the rug out from underneath an extremely important part of our strategy for contacting and staying in touch with young people in our community, namely, police and citizens youth clubs.
Let me give an illustration of this. We have recently heard concerns about activities of Aboriginal youth, Aboriginal gangs, so-called, in parts of South Canberra. The police have had a recent task force give attention to this matter. That is, with respect, a reactive role. What proactive efforts have we made in this area, apart from committees? Our Narrabundah Police and Citizens Youth Club has been very active in conducting Blue Light discos particularly targeted towards Aboriginal youth in our community. That is one of the activities that are at risk because of this decision to cut. I find it very hard to imagine how any Blue Light discos are going to be very successful if we take seven police positions - the entire complement of police resources in police and citizens youth clubs - out of those clubs. In fact, you might as well call them Canberra citizens youth clubs and forget the police altogether in those circumstances.
How do you get an interface between young people and police when you do that? You simply cannot. You cannot pay lip-service to strategies for community policing and then cut the few initiatives we have to do that. You cannot have a 37 per cent-plus youth unemployment rate in this town and not place special attention on building links between young people and the police. It is simply not feasible. It is a lack of reality on the part of this Government even to contemplate that idea. Developing physical and social skills, raising self-esteem, social interaction, learning about teamwork and fair play are the goals of our police and citizens youth clubs. I am appalled that members in this place would not think those were things worth supporting, not just with lip-service, not just with rhetoric, not just with cute press releases, but, in reality, through the decisions we make as a government and as an Assembly.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.57): I was pleased to hear in the opening of Mr Humphries's remarks that he seems to be won across to the strategy of crime prevention I have been talking about, both when I was in opposition in this place and since Labor has been in government. I am pleased that the Liberal Party's attitude to crime prevention is now somewhat enlightened, and I trust that that will remain the Liberal Party's position if
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