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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 7 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 1884 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

The appointment was made by the national Australian Police Commissioner, Mick Palmer, who happened to choose himself. The fact is that he could have chosen whomever he wanted. There are no requirements for him to consult with our Minister for Police, the ACT Government, or even this Assembly.

Mr Humphries: He did.

MR OSBORNE: Mr Humphries says that he did. What I said is that there are no legal requirements for that. Under our present arrangement things just happen - Assistant Commissioner Allen today, Commissioner Palmer tomorrow. The ACT's policing arrangements, like so much else that it seems we do or try in this city, are unique in Australia. We buy our police force from the Commonwealth but have no formal control over it. The Australian Federal Police are answerable to the Federal Minister for Justice, while our day-to-day relationship with the AFP depends purely on goodwill and not on law. We fork out over $50m a year, yet we have no say in how any of it is spent. All this is done in the name of good management and best practice. I think it is a joke, Mr Speaker.

Since being appointed to the job, our new commissioner has very enthusiastically and thoroughly undertaken a program of restructuring our police force. There is no requirement at all for Commissioner Palmer to consult either with Mr Humphries or with us in doing this. In fact, so close was our Minister for Police allowed to be to the play and the decision-making goings-on that the first he knew of some of the changes being made was when he read about them in the Canberra Times. That, I think, is a sad fact and totally unacceptable.

Mr Berry: It is outrageous, not just a sad fact.

MR OSBORNE: It is absolutely outrageous, as Mr Berry says. I am not opposed to changes being made to the structure of our police force. I have to say that many of the changes that have taken place make good sense and are good management of our police resources. But what is not good management is that we, the elected governors of the city, had absolutely no say in what was going on. In fact, there is not even a requirement that we be told what had been decided. It is hardly the way you would want to run a business - or just about anything else, for that matter. It is certainly not good management to restrict the way a Government Minister is allowed to act. What if changes are made that produce negative results? Who wears the consequences then? It is the people of Canberra. They deserve much better than that.

Over the past few months the Legal Affairs Committee of the Assembly has been conducting an inquiry into the ACT being able to appoint its own Chief Police Officer and its own Police Commissioner. After hearing all the submissions, the committee unanimously agreed that the best thing for the people of Canberra was for them to have a Police Commissioner who was answerable to this Assembly on all matters of police policy. When the committee report was tabled during the last sitting week there was a great deal of consensus among the members here who agreed with the findings and recommendations of that report. Even Mr Humphries was theoretically very much in favour.

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