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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (27 November) . . Page.. 4830 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

organised, there is concern particularly about the vulnerable groups in the ACT community, such as the elderly.

Another example of this lack of concern is the absence of staff at Canberra police stations to answer the phone when the community calls for help or information. We have spoken about this at some length. I have talked about the examples of Latham, Lyons and Weston. I have talked before about the example in Lyons of the four houses in a row where cars were broken into. All of those residents tried to call police to get to the scene of the crime before "the trail went cold", but for 90 minutes no phone calls were answered.

The Labor government has accepted this lack of service by transferring all calls to police stations to the 131 444 call centre. Mr Speaker, this means that no-one in the Canberra community has telephone access to their local police station for assistance or information. The minister for police has said before in the chamber that people should call the 131 444 number for assistance. That is fine, Mr Speaker, but what if they need information about a certain event, a law and order matter, or simply some advice about what they should do in a particular set of circumstances?

They do not necessarily know how to report an incident to the NRMA. Sometimes people need to be able to get general advice, and this is not a five-day-a-week, eight-hour-a-day type of advice. This is seven days. The Labor government has simply removed the Canberra community's telephone access to their local police stations instead of solving the problem through positive solutions such as more police officers available to serve the community.

Mr Speaker, let's get the favourite subject of the minister right here on the table, the mounted police force; or should I say the former mounted police force, the recently disbanded mounted police force. I know the minister loves talking about all the valuable things in the ACT that he has canned during Labor's time in government.

Canberra's mounted police force comprised two mounted police officers and horses and equipment, Mr Speaker, that was originally established by our former Chief Minister, Mr Humphries. There were plans to develop this force into six mounted police officers and horses. Unfortunately, the Labor government came into power and the mounted police force really had no chance.

Mr Speaker, people notice the presence of the mounted police force on the street. Children and youths actually engaged the mounted police officers and interacted with these officers. We cannot undervalue that. What we do know, and this is traditional right across western society communities, is that a lot of people will not talk to police. That is just the way things are, particularly in the sorts of societies we live in now.

What we do find, and what has been clearly recorded here in the Canberran experience, is that mounted police always have people coming up to them. Firstly, people are attracted to the horses, and naturally it flows that people then talk to the officers. The officers begin to engage, there is an interface, people become more confident with those police, people are more likely to offer information to those police, and police feel much more confident in being able to gain information and so-called crime intelligence.

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