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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2828 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

The same sort of advice is available to anybody who comes forward with a good idea. It still may or may not get through the planning processes. There are no ways of jumping queues. It is simply a matter of making sure that good ideas get as big a chance as possible of becoming reality.

MS McRAE: My question is to Mr Humphries, the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Minister, the ACT is experiencing an alarming spate of armed hold-ups, unprecedented in number. How do you justify your stewardship of the police portfolio when you have been so short-changed in vital police numbers to combat those crimes? Will you apologise to those people who have suffered?

MR HUMPHRIES: I do apologise for having to answer a question that obviously was written before the rest of the answers were given today and does not make any sense in the context in which the previous answers have been provided. Mr Speaker, I make no apologies for having discovered what is a longstanding problem in the relationship between the AFP and the ACT Government. I wonder whether Ms McRae is prepared to apologise for the mistakes of her former Government in not having even asked these questions in over 31/2 years in office.

Mr Moore: That is not fair. She was Speaker at that point.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is right, yes. She was technically a member of the Government. But that is true; she was the Speaker. I am sure Mr Berry, who was a member of the Government, and Mr Wood, who was also a member of the Government, would be prepared to give the apology that you obviously would not be able to give.

Before you come and complain about the resourcing available to deal with things like armed robbery, bear in mind that over the period that you were in office you progressively reduced resourcing to the police by something of the order of 10 per cent, if I recall correctly, over a period of four years. I think, with great respect, Ms McRae, that you and your colleagues should be the last people to come to this place and complain about the police not having enough resources. If they did not have resources because of a shortfall in national support for the AFP, they certainly were not assisted by having a shortfall in resources supplied by the ACT Government under contract.

MS McRAE: I have a supplementary question. I do not think I really got my answer, so I will try again. How long are you going to give yourself to get your act together and see that the ACT does get the protection it needs?

MR HUMPHRIES: Dear, oh dear! Mr Speaker, I think that question has been answered already.

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