Page 1971 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, in this case Mr Humphries is clearly not mistaken; he is clearly being dishonest. He wrote to me last night, in an apparently friendly letter, inviting me to explain the discrepancy between last year's figures and this year's figures, and I responded to him, pointing out that last year the amount appropriated for the police - because of some adjustments for emergency telephones, of all things - was some $52.897m. That is a larger sum than the amount appropriated this year. It is also a considerably larger sum than the amount appropriated in 1992-93. Last year I did not say, "I have increased the police budget by 3 per cent". That would have been dishonest of me. Mr Humphries last year did not say, "You have increased the police budget". Last year Mr Humphries said - - -
Mr Humphries: Because there was a reason. There was a twenty-seventh pay.
MR CONNOLLY: I know that Mr Humphries is getting agitated, but members over there need to hear the answer to this. Last year Mr Humphries said, "You have cut the police budget". He was quite right. I did not claim to have increased the police budget, even though it had gone from $51.5m in 1992-93 to $52.89m - in fact, the published figure was $53m - in 1993-94. I did not claim that that $1.5m was an increase in the police budget. Why was that? Madam Speaker, because of the peculiarity of the way calendars, paydays and pay arrangements operate for different agencies, the police force had 27 pays last year, as Health did the previous year.
Last year there was a sum of $1.519m for additional recurrent expenditure for police which I, quite honestly, did not claim as an increase in police expenditure. Mr Humphries certainly did not claim it as an increase in police expenditure. This year, when that figure is taken off, Mr Humphries bleats, "You have slashed police expenditure". Of course, I have not. We have always acknowledged that we would be looking for a 2 per cent saving in the police budget. We said that that saving would be $880,000, and we have broken up where that saving was achieved. But we have enhanced the police budget by some $1.176m of additional initiatives, which means a net increase of - - -
Mr Kaine: When you say "enhanced", do you mean "increased"?
MR CONNOLLY: I mean "increased". It means "increased", Mr Kaine. The gross dishonour of having the $1.5m explained to you but putting out a press release accusing me of telling porkies and saying that I have in fact slashed the police budget by $1.7m is breathtaking, but it is not something that I am surprised at.
While I was away from Canberra the other week Mr Humphries put out a press release saying that Canberra has the highest rate of shoplifting in Australia; that the Institute of Criminology's report says that Canberra has the highest rate of shoplifting in commercial businesses. What the Institute of Criminology, in fact, said in their report was that particular care must be taken. For example, the number of respondents from the ACT and the Northern Territory was very small - 17 - so little can be said with confidence about business in these small States. Mr Humphries is not averse to taking a report, based on only 17 responses, saying that we should take the findings with a great deal of caution and putting out a press release screaming, "The Institute of Criminology says that crime is on the rampage in Canberra".
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