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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 580 ..

MR HUMPHRIES

1 January 1996 to 126 prisoners as at 1 January 1999. That is an increase of 56 per cent over three years. Given that we spend about $60,000 per prisoner per year on that accommodation, there is an increase of $2.7m per year from that source alone. Our remand centre has also risen dramatically in occupancy over that period. There has been an increase of approximately 95 per cent in its occupancy rate. There has been an increase of 55 per cent in the number of offenders under community supervision. We also have pressure to address the correctional health issue, which I believe is a major priority in the coming budget. The efficiency of the court has been drawn to attention by the Productivity Commission. Mr Speaker, I believe that we have to force through a process of review and change in that area as well.

The area of policing has been very interesting. The ACT's average annual expenditure per police member in 1997-98 was $74,875, compared with a national average expenditure of just over $61,000; that is, our police officers per capita were $13,838, or 23 per cent, above the national average for every police officer. While it is true to say that the ACT probably has too few police on its streets, we also have a problem obviously in having a higher than average national cost for each police officer on our streets. That is a problem we simply have to deal with. We also have the problem of pressures which are one-off but which are very severe on our budget, such as the Conway murder investigation and the activities of certain motorcycle gangs, which have a huge flow-on effect on our budgets.

Mr Hird: Winchester.

MR HUMPHRIES: The Winchester case is another example of the pressures which are very hard to budget for in any kind of planned way.

Members are already well aware of the pressures from the criminal injuries compensation scheme. So far this year we have spent $3.428m, already above the budgeted figure of $3.1m, and we are only a bit over halfway through the financial year. We are now projecting an expenditure this financial year of over $5m. That is a 63 per cent increase in the budgeted figure. We simply have to do something about that budget if we are going to contain the cost of that scheme and the sustainability of other parts of the budget.

The insurance levy I want to touch on very briefly. The insurance levy now raises 73 per cent of the running costs of fire services in New South Wales. Our $10m levy is equivalent to 33 per cent of what it costs to run our emergency services. Mr Speaker, the comment has been made in this debate that the emergency services levy is inequitable. I do not think that I heard anybody say they would actually abolish that levy if they were in government. I detected a sense that they would change the basis on which it was levied. The suggestion has been made, for example, that people should be levied through their rates rather than targeting insurance policy-holders solely as the way in which to collect this levy. I want to address that issue very briefly.

Mr Speaker, there are approximately 100,000 ratepayers or sets of ratepayers in the ACT at the present time. Although the figures are not accurately available, it is my estimate that the number of insurance policy-holders is well above 100,000, that is, there are well over 100,000 people who insure in the ACT at the present time. That is not very surprising if you think about it. Every person who owns a house, with very few

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