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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2216 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I would like to know whether the police are prepared for the Olympics and CHOGM. I do not think they are. There are rumours that police have had their leave cancelled for the next year due to the Olympics. How are we going to pay for that? How are we going to pay for the leave of the police at the end of the day? The Federal Government is their employer, after all. Our police are only contracted. This is a body hire company, for God's sake. The police are being told, "Well, we will pay you out for your outstanding leave at 50c in the dollar". It is not 50c in a dollar. That is the amount they get. It is 25c in the dollar because you have to take the tax off. It is criminal.

What has this Minister, our Minister for Justice and Community Safety, done to use his influence with the Federal Minister? What has he done to make sure that this town does not suffer when the inevitable happens and the AFP start agitating for some justice with their pay rates; when the AFP find that they have to give up their leave for CHOGM and the Olympics, which is a reasonable thing to ask them to do? What is unreasonable is to pay them out at 50c in the dollar. What are we doing here in this town to make sure that we do not suffer? The AFP is a contractor, even at is basest. We have a contract. It is incumbent upon our representative to say to the contractor, "What contingency plans do you have to make sure that my citizens are protected?" I want to know what he has done.

To be quite honest, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, in the majority of dealings that I have had with the Minister over law and order issues, I have to say he has done a great job. Occasionally we disagree. Occasionally we disagree violently. I might even say that if I had had a sword in my hand that would have been the end of him. However, most of the time I think he does a great job, and I know that he attacks it from a compassionate position. However, I want to know what it is that he is doing about this.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I do not accept the view given to us that we cannot distinguish between the budgets for the Fire Service and the other elements of Emergency Services. We got that in estimates. We were told, "Well, we are putting them all in the same bucket so that we've got a great service, but we don't tell you." The converse of the coin is that we are not going to get rid of the uniqueness of the different services. How would we like it if we could not tell the difference between an ambulance officer, a policeman, a fireman, a butcher or a newspaper boy? What we are saying here is that this department cannot provide us with details of the discretion between these things in the budget.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Oracle financial system on which they have their finances is a series of interlocking three dimensional matrix codes and it can take a trained monkey to get them out. I ask the Minister to go and employ a trained monkey so that he can pull them out and tell me. I knew these things when I was working in the Public Service before I came here. I knew how to manipulate it and it is possible.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I apologise for interrupting you, Mr Hargreaves. You gentlemen on my left, if you wish to have a discussion, please use the mute button because it makes it very difficult for the staff recording Hansard.

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