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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 868 ..
Mr Quinlan: It is not a debate. Sit down.
Mr Smyth
: No, it is a point of order.MR SPEAKER
: Mr Smyth, it is not an issue of relevance, it is about sticking to the subject matter. The subject matter of the question was policing and Mr Wood is talking about policing.Mr Smyth
: And the national average?MR SPEAKER
: I cannot put words in Mr Wood's, or any other minister's mouth, and neither can you, regrettably.Mr Smyth
: This is true but you can expect them to be relevant.MR WOOD
: Thank you, Mr Speaker. My memory tells me that Mr Pratt's punchline, Mr Smyth, was whether we get a lower level of service. It had the word service in it. It is a simplistic question.Mr Smyth
: It is a question that Johnny Hargreaves used to ask.Mr Quinlan
: You want something different? We have to put up with them.MR WOOD
: Point taken, Mr Quinlan. There is a whole series of assumptions about the level of policing and the services we deliver. I think that, if I went back into the record-and I have not done it and I do not intend to-I would find that, historically, the ACT police numbers per 100,000 have been lower than the Australian average. I doubt it was any different when Mr Smyth was minister for police, or Mr Stefaniak. It does not make any difference.Mr Hargreaves
: It was lower.MR WOOD
: It was lower, was it, Mr Hargreaves?Mr Hargreaves
: It was a lot lower.MR WOOD
: I am not sure that I want to get into the argument and go back to see what the statistics said. It relates to the sort of community we were at the time. If I really wanted to go backwards I could probably find the answer Mr Smyth gave that might have been something of the order of, "This is a community that is, in itself, not average for Australia. It is, in itself, not the standard for Australia."In all sorts of areas, the services we offer are different. I believe that they are, in every respect, excellent.MR PRATT
: Is the minister aware of the ACT Labor Party's current website which states, under policy, in the section on justice and community safety, and I quote, "Labor will implement a program to restore the number of police officers available to at least the national average"? Mr Wood, come in spinner. Is this just another example of broken promises by a lacklustre government?
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