Page 1570 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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MR CONNOLLY: This is the unusual thing, Madam Speaker. This is the pettiness that sometimes surrounds this debate in this place. Members would often have occasion to watch the television news and see either the ABC feed from Sydney or one of the commercial feeds from Sydney. Every night there is a litany of murder, rape and mayhem as we see the Sydney metropolitan crime round-up. In five years of watching the Sydney metropolitan news feed and the daily litany of crime and shock and horror, I do not think I have once seen the Labor Opposition spokesperson on television saying, "It is all Mr Hannaford's fault and it is all Mr Fahey's fault that there has been crime in Sydney". But for some reason, Madam Speaker, whenever there is crime in the ACT Mr Humphries puts out a press release saying, "It is all Mr Connolly's fault". I think the public are pretty switched on to that.
Mr Humphries then moved on to the Australian Bureau of Statistics report that was issued in April of this year. The Government, I must say quite frankly, has real difficulties with this report. I just cannot accept that this report provides an accurate picture of what is going on in the ACT. Mr Dawson, the Chief Police Officer, has publicly concurred with the Government's view on that. It is quite impossible to reconcile the figures that were given in this report with the whole range of indicia of crime and law and order statistics. We look at the AFP reports that come out year by year and the way that those reports are reconciled by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Year by year the Institute of Criminology consistently shows that the ACT is in the lower order of rates of crime for Australian capital cities, which again is where we would hope and expect to be.
We have had problems in recent years with burglaries. That was Mr Humphries's hobbyhorse for about 12 months. Last financial year, as was reported in the annual report published just before Christmas, the AFP put in place some strategies, by way of a burglary task force, which have had some quite pleasing responses. We would hope to see some improvement in housebreak figures. But, as the NRMA pointed out last year, and as I sadly expect they will point out again this year when they report on housebreaking rates for the ACT and New South Wales, the rate at which Canberra residents install simple devices such as deadlocks and window locks is way below the rate at which residents in metropolitan Sydney install those simple devices. The way to get on top of property crime clearly is to have a tougher target. Mr Humphries may say that the best way is to have a police officer stationed outside every residence, but that is clearly silly.
We have seen a turnaround in car theft figures across Australia - not because you have a Labor government here or a Liberal government somewhere else, but because motor vehicle manufacturers have installed safety devices in motor vehicles that mean that the modern car is extremely difficult to steal. As the target gets tougher, so the rate of crime is dropping off.
Mr Humphries: So people are to blame for these high crime rates, are they?
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Humphries interjects, "The people are to blame". What I am saying, Madam Speaker, is not the view of a politician. What I am saying is what the police say and what the NRMA say. We have to adopt a holistic approach to crime control and, as a community, work together against crime.
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