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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3934 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

sure that the designation Mr Pratt gave is correct. I think he is probably right, but I want to make sure that the designation he gave doesn't reflect some change in the way police are described. Recently the police have re-instituted the senior constable band, but that is very recently. So I just want to look at that.

What else did Mr Pratt raise?

Mr Pratt: Not much.

MR WOOD: Not a lot, no. I do concede that the way this community is policed is an issue of great concern to the ACT community; it is of great interest to them. I have heard everybody in this chamber at some stage say that this is the safest city in the world-safest city of this size, safest capital city. And yet here, as elsewhere, there is a perception that it is not safe. It comes up in polls. Whether you give great credibility to some of these polls, it does come up and there is a perception that people are concerned. But it is certainly a very safe city in which to live.

I want to talk further on the point that Mr Pratt raised about the qualifications or the grades of the police here. There is an issue that I have been engaged in in discussions with the AFP and that is the impact on ACT Policing of the overseas deployment of AFP personnel, national and ACT. We in the ACT have traditionally responded when the AFP has been involved in overseas deployments, and I am comfortable that our present commitments to Cyprus, East Timor and the Solomons have not acted adversely on policing the ACT. Certainly the advice from the chief police officer is to that effect and I confidently accept that advice.

I am told that, to minimise the impact on service delivery in the ACT, the contingent sent to the Solomons was not top heavy. For once there was no mandatory period of policing experience set as a pre-requisite, so many fewer experienced police had the opportunity to go and there are still experienced officers available here.

However, I am concerned that possible future overseas deployments, perhaps to Papua New Guinea, might affect policing in the ACT, particularly when we consider that deployments are not one-off events and personnel need to be rotated. I was concerned when I heard Mr Downer, or the Prime Minister or someone, saying we are going to go to PNG as well. For that reason, I made contact some little time ago and I will be meeting with the Commonwealth Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Ellison, next week, next Tuesday.

I will be raising my concerns that ACT Policing would be adversely affected by any further commitments beyond the numbers currently deployed. I will also be suggesting some possible solutions of our own, such as extra police recruited by the AFP to be on standby, but to undertake policing in the ACT or elsewhere when not deployed.

That is an issue of concern but, on all the advice I get, I am confident with the standard, the qualities, the levels of police in the ACT at this time, and that they are, with all their colleagues, working very well to make this a safe community but with the intention of making it an even safer community and a community which both respects the police force and acknowledges the work that they do.

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