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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3750 ..

MR STEFANIAK: Mr Stanhope says, "Not much." I would have thought he would have learnt from my answer to him yesterday. Mr Stanhope, even though you were not here during the Follett government, we have done a hell of a lot more than they ever did.

Mr Stanhope: The burglary capital of Australia.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stefaniak has the floor.

MR STEFANIAK: It is probably sensible to say a little bit about that. I recall that in the First Assembly in 1991 the Follett government reduced the police budget by 2 per cent. I think it went from about $53 million to $52 million. Guess where that came from? That came from the operational budget.

Mr Stanhope: The car theft capital of Australia.

MR SPEAKER: Gentlemen, if you keep that up you will be warned.

MR STEFANIAK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was a real reduction of about 14 per cent. Basically, that continued during the Follett government. Police numbers, which were some 694, I think, when the agreement was signed in 1990 with the Alliance government, dropped, and dropped quite substantially.

Mr Stanhope: Bill, the party king.

MR SPEAKER: I warn you, Mr Stanhope.

MR STEFANIAK: So your party, Mr Stanhope, has a very poor record on policing. Just ask any police officer that. Despite the perilous state in which we found the ACT economy in 1995 - an operating loss of some $344 million; the Follett government had achieved the seemingly impossible, squandering a budget surplus which we had inherited from the Commonwealth in 1989 - this government managed to put a prime focus on restoring the financial health of our economy. At the same time, despite those economic difficulties, we maintained and improved on our police force. Now the budget is getting back into kilter after the disastrous years of Labor.

First, Mr Hird, we have put some $10 million extra into policing this year. That means 82 extra police on the beat. As I said to Mr Stanhope yesterday, the figures he is quoting, the 1999 figures, were bad in many instances, yes. In other instances they were not. For things like murder they were fine, but for things like burglary they were bad. That is why, as I said yesterday, we introduced Operation Strike Back and Operation Hand Brake. We are seeing the benefits of that. The burglary figures are tracking downwards quite considerably. The car theft figures are tracking downwards quite considerably. It will be very interesting at the end of this financial year to produce those figures and compare them with figures for previous years. We are using intelligence - based policing.

Part of being smarter about crime is addressing things like courses of crime and taking measures to assist in crime prevention. Today I was very proud to join with the Chief Minister and the Chief Police Officer in announcing further initiatives, which total some $1.292 million, to assist in crime prevention. Mr Speaker, these initiatives will provide valuable additional resources to assist in addressing crime prevention. They include the

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