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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 240 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I hope that there will be no impediment to proceeding with the signing of that arrangement at the earliest opportunity, assuming it is satisfactory from the point of view of the ACT community and assuming also it is satisfactory from the Commonwealth's point of view. I should emphasise that the arrangement is only a draft arrangement. It has been negotiated principally between officers in the ACT and officers in the Commonwealth. It as yet has no political imprimatur from the Commonwealth Government. I assume, for the purposes of this debate, that completion of the inquiry Mr Osborne has moved for will not be a prerequisite for signing the agreement with the Commonwealth. That would be most unfortunate.

I believe what the inquiry is likely to show is a range of unsatisfactory elements of our relationship with the AFP which, in part, this arrangement is designed to address. Our capacity, therefore, to move as quickly as possible to put in place the arrangements to see more transparency and accountability in our present operations and to have the Commonwealth consult us on a range of critical matters before decisions are taken is absolutely essential.

Most important to the ACT, at least in symbolic terms, is the obligation on the Commonwealth's part to consult with the ACT Minister before an appointment is made of a Chief Police Officer and, indeed, the right of the ACT Government to express a want of confidence in the Chief Police Officer of the day, if it feels it needs to come to that point, and flowing from that to remove the Chief Police Officer. That is a measure of control which I understand every other State government has over its police commissioner. It is important for us to have that same measure of control over the people who are responsible for the management of policing facilities in the ACT.

We believe we need to be accountable as a government for what happens in the AFP. At the moment we are in the invidious position of being responsible in the eyes of the ACT community but in fact not having the levers at our disposal to put the responses to the AFP that we as a government, as a community, believe ought to be the case. We can say that we want certain things, but whether we can demand those things, whether we can require those things, whether we can direct those things to take place is highly problematic in the present arrangements. The consequences of that, I believe, are what this inquiry will disclose.

Mr Speaker, I have some concerns about the ambit of the inquiry. I see it as being reasonably tightly limited to certain matters. Paragraph (7), "any related matter", obviously opens up a range of other possibilities. Members may find themselves subject to a range of issues being put before the committee which are outside the scope of what might be debated today but which will certainly be of concern to some citizens in this community in respect of the police in this city. There will be concerns relating to such things as police powers, police behaviour in certain circumstances, what the police say and do in courts, what the police say and do in interviews and how the police handle particular types of offenders, including Aboriginal offenders. There will be a range of issues which will be put before this committee, I suspect, because these issues are put before me as police Minister from time to time. I do not see why they would not be put

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