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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3130 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

specifications that are required for an A1 surface at Bruce Stadium. As I am sure everybody realises, the playing surface for the stadium is our lifeblood - certainly the lifeblood of the stadium. It is important that it is as perfect as possible, and our project manager, consultant and contractor will need to ensure that that is achieved.

As to Mr Osborne's comment that somehow I should interfere in a tender process, that would be extremely inappropriate. Tender processes are supposed to happen without the Minister directing who should or should not get the tender. But, wherever possible, we will do all in our power to help local companies.

MR OSBORNE: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I did not ask you to go in to bat for Canturf, Chief Minister. All I did was ask whether or not you had approached R.A. Young to see whether they could reconsider this one specification, which is the size of the roll. Would you go in to bat for a locally-based company against a Victorian one or not? That is what I want to know. I am not asking you to go in and say, "Canturf should get the job".

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, that is the reason one of the officers of my department is meeting with the company this afternoon. I got the letter last Friday and immediately took action.

MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Police, Mr Humphries. Minister, you will recall that on 2 September you announced that 17 police officers would be redeployed from AFP national headquarters to the ACT Region for operational duties within three weeks - one of several initiatives designed to overcome the shortfall that existed in the policing services provided by the AFP. Minister, can you confirm whether 17 officers have now been redeployed, and particularly I am interested in the way they were chosen? Can you inform the Assembly of the criteria that were used to judge their suitability for operational service in the ACT police service?

MR HUMPHRIES: To take the latter part of Mr Wood's question first, no, I cannot give any advice about the judging of their suitability. One assumes that the Australian Federal Police employ as police only people who are suited to be police. If they were not suited to be police, presumably they would not be in the AFP. I suppose each organisation might develop people who are not that good at sprinting 100 metres to chase a person who has just snatched a handbag from a little old lady; but, then again, not all police have that capacity anyway, even in an operations-based organisation like the ACT Region of the AFP. There are some police who are good at other things and they accordingly do focus on those things. I could not say whether the police have transferred 17 lethargic potbellied men with bandy legs into the ACT Region, rather than 17 strapping young constables; but I am sure that we have been adequately brought up to strength under this exercise and I am certain that the AFP have employed policemen of capacity to carry out this job in the ACT. I believe I gave advice in the last sitting of the Assembly on the expected timeframe for the implementation of that decision.

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