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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2814 ..

MR BERRY: My question is about police numbers. In response to Mr Wood's questions you said yesterday that an additional 17 police officers will be rapidly redeployed from AFP National Headquarters to the ACT Region. This is an admission that the people of the ACT have been short-changed. I think that is pretty clear.

Mr Humphries: Yes, it is.

MR BERRY: I think you acknowledged that yesterday. Minister, is this the full extent of the shortfall? How much greater might it be, and do you really have any idea what it might be? If you cannot answer any of those questions, do you think we should send in the fraud squad?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Berry for that question. I admit, as I did yesterday, quite freely, that the ACT has been short-changed. To be quite frank, it seems to me that there was a problem with budgeting by the AFP at the Federal level, and a bit of what we might colloquially call robbing Peter to pay Paul took place in order to deal with that problem. I will take the charitable view of that, in that it was not engineered so much as happened by default; but, whatever the intention behind it, it is clear that it did occur and that the ACT, during a period of some years, experienced a shortfall in the appropriate allocation to the ACT as provided for by the contract between the ACT and the Commonwealth Government.

I have had a briefing, with a graph showing exactly where the ACT stood in respect of its allocation from the Commonwealth and in respect of what was delivered. That is not with me at the moment, but I will undertake to bring that down to the chamber and table it, hopefully before the end of question time. That demonstrates exactly where each deficiency occurred in any given week. The lowest point was in September 1994, during the previous Government's life; but, whatever the reason, it should have been picked up before now. It was not, and I am interested in why. That is a matter that I am further exploring with the Australian Federal Police. I think you asked me about the extent of the shortfall and the dates of the shortfall, Mr Berry?

Mr Berry: No; how much greater might it be?

MR HUMPHRIES: The extent of the shortfall will be disclosed in that graph which I will produce later on. I have indicated two things to the Federal Police. One is that I want the shortfall made up immediately, or as soon as practicable, and maintained as much as practicable so that the ACT is not in the position of dipping below its agreed amount. The other issue I have made clear is that I want some arrangement addressed which will provide for some compensation to the Territory for the deficiency over the last, at least, three or four years when we have been short-changed. Whether that takes the form of additional police, more police than we are contracted for rather than less, or whether it takes the form of money, I do not know; but I have asked the police to ensure that it is addressed, and I expect to be advised about that in due course.

MR BERRY: I have a supplementary question. I am sure the police did not give a money-back guarantee, but the usual step is that if you do not get value for money you get your money back. Will you make sure that we get the money back?

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