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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2390 ..

MR STANHOPE: Yes, thank you, Mr Speaker. There are some questions around that, questions that I have never had explained to me or expanded on through the estimates process when I have raised this issue in each of the last three years. I struggle to understand why any government agency can simply nominate one of the national legal firms, say that it will be the agency's provider of legal advice, go to that firm and rack up bills of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars, and not be subject to some expressions of interest or tendering process. It is an issue that needs to be explored and dealt with.

I will conclude with a couple of other issues. I will not dwell on them at length. They are issues which I have touched on before, even during this debate, and of which we are all aware. It is appropriate to touch again on the issue of the unacceptably high level of property crime in the ACT. We continue to lead the nation in relation to car theft and burglaries. Significant work has been done by the Australian Federal Police in relation to each of these issues in recent times, but to some extent they are stopgap, bandaid measures, as we all know.

As soon as the members of the AFP that have been delegated to form the task force in relation to burglary and car theft are returned to their normal duties we will find, as a result of the fact that there has been no decrease in the level of heroin or substance abuse in the ACT, that the level of crime will be unaffected. We all know that that is what is going to happen as soon as the members of the AFP who have been delegated to the task force go back to their standard duties. One has to ask: what is happening to the normal work in all of those sections within the AFP from which these officers have been drawn? How well is it being carried out? What gaps are appearing in other areas of police work as a result of the transfer of officers to the special task force?

Each of us knows that these are stopgap, short-term measures and that, as soon as the task force is disbanded and those police officers return to their normal duties, burglary and car theft will return to the levels to which they were at before the task force was formed. There is a pea and thimble problem in relation to this attempt at doing something about burglary and car theft. As commendable as the effort of the AFP is, we know that unless those task forces are maintained permanently and unless we do something about the level of substance abuse, the end-term result will be negligible.

I move from that point, and I think it is a logical step, to comment on the level of indigenous crime in the ACT. There is no doubt that each of us here knows and accepts that there is an appallingly unacceptable level of indigenous participation in criminal activity. Whilst we share the same level of concern for any crime and treat any crime with the same level of approbation-it is completely unacceptable, socially unacceptable, unacceptable to the victims of that crime completely and utterly and to us as a community-it is interesting that, although only 2 per cent or less of the ACT population is comprised of indigenous people, they are enormously overrepresented in relation to their participation in the criminal justice system and the extent to which they are incarcerated, both as youths and as adults, just as they are similarly overrepresented in relation to their addiction to a whole range of illicit substances. Those issues are all linked, as we all know, but there is a special pressure on each of us within this community to address the issues of indigenous disadvantage that have led to the most appalling statistics in relation to indigenous people.

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