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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1116 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
whenever a vehicle is stolen we all suffer. In the extreme, it may mean death and physical injury to people; but we all suffer from the fact that we are paying insurance premiums to compensate for people not taking the simple precaution of locking their cars.
What is Mr Hargreaves' answer to that? It is to make sure that there is a better clear-up rate on stolen vehicles; clearing up is an outcome because we have crime. Surely prevention is better than cure, Mr Speaker. Surely we should do everything possible in our means to stop, hinder or slow down those who would steal our vehicles, instead of saying, "Let us leave the cars open so that they can be flogged. After all, you are the only one who suffers and that is a choice you make. We will just make sure that the cops clear up the stolen car rate quicker and more effectively". It is just so illogical that it is ridiculous.
Let me refer to what happened recently in Sydney. It is important that the people know about it. I read from an article in the Canberra Times of 24 February this year - a month ago:
A man was arrested yesterday for allegedly stealing a car from a service station with a 12-year-old girl inside, police said.
The man, 18, allegedly stole the station wagon when the owner went inside the Heatherbrae service station, north of Newcastle, to pay for petrol, a police spokesman said. The owner's 12-year-old daughter remained in the car while her father went inside to pay, with the keys still in the ignition.
The man had jumped into the vehicle and took off. Soon afterwards, he had let the girl out on the Pacific Highway before speeding away again.
What we have from not securing a vehicle and leaving a child inside is the terrible outcome that for a short period this child was kidnapped, effectively, and then the person who stole the vehicle sped away. There was a happy outcome, thank goodness. The same thing happened in an incident that occurred in America earlier this year. A mother went into a shop to purchase a drink and left her six-year-old son in the car. I will read the article because the young boy was killed in the end. The article reads:
On Tuesday the boy's mother, Christy Robel, left her son sitting in the back seat of her sport-utility vehicle while she ran inside an area sandwich shop to get the boy a soft drink, according to police.
A car thief - who had just been released from police custody due to a mistake - jumped into the vehicle, where Robel had left the keys in the ignition. As the man began to pull out of the parking lot, the frantic mother tried in vain to yank her child from the back seat. But Jake became caught in a twisted seatbelt and Robel lost her grip on her son as the car thief sped away.
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