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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 244 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

The motion talks about police morale. I spoke about that a minute ago. I am surprised that it is high as it is. If I was a policeman, my morale would not be anywhere near the height of that of the policemen I know. We have a nice little town here and it is working well. Because of the commitment of one particular person to organisational reform, the whole perception of policing has changed. That has had an enormous detrimental effect. I do not think adherence to the new model of the complete constable is on. (Extension of time granted) We all endorse having a complete constable who is multiskilled and highly professional. However, we do not endorse the concept that a constable on the beat can do everything so that every time something blows up we pull him out of one place and whack him into another one. This scheme, in my view, is nothing short of maniacal, wrong and misguided. The people who lose are the average policemen on the street and the community at large. When we remove these specialist groups, we take away the core corporate history, the criminal history, which is built up over a number of years. That is the big loss. We will be looking into that sort of thing, I would hope. We will be looking into police priorities and resource allocations.

One of the things which will come out of this inquiry, no doubt, will be whether or not the ACT ought to have its own police force. We would hope that people in the community would express a view about that. At the moment the arrangement is, at its crudest, a private contract arrangement. When you have a private contract arrangement, you do not care what the management structure of the contractor is. You just want the product. We are paying $56m. I reckon we have a right to have a say in what that management structure looks like. Otherwise, the contractor can go away and we will get another one.

I believe that there is probably an accommodation between what the AFP has and what the ACT needs. This inquiry may very well reveal that. To have our own ACT police force does not necessarily mean that the officers have to be ACT public servants. There are other models which can apply. Let us see if we can explore those in the course of this inquiry. At the end of the day we have 700 police in this town who are our people. They are people who live down the street from you, people who shop next to you at the supermarket, people whose kids go to your school. Just because they happen to be agents of the AFP does not necessarily mean that they are out-of-towners. We have to make sure that, whatever we do, these guys are looked after. They have kept this community safe for so long. I suggest that we occasionally owe them more than they owe us.

I support this motion and I would exhort members to treat it in the spirit in which it is raised. We want something positive to come out of this. This is not a bagging exercise. This is an information-sharing exercise. We want to get everything out on the table. We want to be able to say to the Government, "This is how the community feels that things are with the police at the moment. This is how much confidence they have. This is what is wrong with the system". Then, when we see the details of the purchase/provider model we can make sure that they are addressed. I look forward to a copy of the letter the Minister has said he is going to send to my chairman, Mr Osborne. But if it is just a letter saying that we are going to have a head of agreement and a purchase/provider

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