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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 516 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

an academic way and that I am aware of - it may well be that the Legal Affairs Committee finds more, as I did it over a short time - was a paper from New Scientist of December 1995. The paper was only a month old. I drew attention to sections of that. I believe that I did not take them out of context. I provided the full paper on that.

Mr Humphries: Which said that crime went down by 13 per cent, I believe.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects and says that crime went down by 13 per cent.

Mr Humphries: And cameras were used.

MR MOORE: Where cameras were used. Indeed. But you have to read it in context. In my press release I was trying to be as fair as I could. The research was done in Sutton in England and Airdrie in Scotland. In my press release I said:

In Sutton the research showed that where other preventative community police options were tried crime decreased considerably more than where there were closed circuit TV cameras installed. There was a 13 per cent drop where the cameras were installed but elsewhere the reduction was 30 per cent.

Mr Humphries: Great; use both things.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries now interjects, "Use both things". If you read the papers you will see that both things were being used in that case. I think it is worth while looking very carefully at that research.

I must say that the New Scientist article was by a person looking at the research rather than by the original researchers. I think it is very important that we look at the original research and see what its strengths and weaknesses are, and what the researchers themselves said were the limitations of their research. All those questions need to be asked before the trial starts. You do that before the trial starts, just as you do with any trial. The first part of doing any trial is to do the literature search and to ensure that you have some understanding of whether you are going to have all the advantages or whether there are actually some disadvantages. That article on the research indicated that there were some disadvantages. While vandalism and vehicle theft dropped, other theft and personal robberies increased in those areas. Even worse, criminals moved away from the streets and started stealing from people in shops. Those are the sorts of issues that need to be dealt with.

The situation is that Mr Humphries has operated prematurely. I presumed that one of the reasons why he operated prematurely is that he had the firms there saying to him, "It is all right, Minister. We will provide you with a great deal. We will get you started". Of course they would do that, because once he is in that frame of mind and under way with those cameras you already have a situation where that particular business - and good on them - has a competitive edge. Do not be sucked in by it. We must not act prematurely. Those people will still be there. They will still be wanting to do business with the ACT in this way. Instead of doing that, let us step carefully.

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