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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 5085 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

plan. There would seem to be adequate funding lined up against the traditional suburban services expenditure lines.

Is it therefore because the funds are not being spent wisely? Is it because the professionalism in the planning and the management of those items being funded has slipped away? Is it because the government simply accepts lock, stock and barrel the departmental advice about the delivery of services and cares not to check for themselves? I think it is probably a combination of all of those things.

Mr Speaker, I have spoken ad infinitum in this place about the deteriorating police services delivered to the community-into suburban Canberra. I will just run over those briefly. There is the 000 service. We have had a litany of complaints by residents in suburbia who have been unable to access the 000 service, and we do implore the government to do something about building some redundancy into the system and re-create a local backup system which will provide a better emergency service to Canberra's suburban residents.

Let me deal with police responses. Let me list some of the areas of notoriety, where suburban crime is simply not being responded to. Richardson, Chisholm, Monash and Kambah are four suburbs in Brindabella which have suffered multiple serial burnouts.

Look at the junction of Proctor and Norriss streets in Chisholm. For the fourth time in nine months, I have had it reported to me that young hoons have been spilling oil on that junction. The poor old fire brigade, who does provide a good service to suburbia, has to go down there and hose the place down. The burnouts which are occurring there have just continued. Why are the police unable to do something about improving the lot of those living in that part of suburbia? What about the 100-kilometre an hour speed activities along Proctor Street by young blokes moving up Proctor Street past the Vikings Club so that they can do a broadside spinout at that junction? These are incidents which have occurred so many times that you would have thought that we would have been able to do something about preventing that.

There are the youth gangs in Red Hill. There has been property damage and graffiti along some of those streets. What about the multiple car damages in Lyons in September of this year? In Harbison Crescent in Wanniassa, cars were scratched in May of this year. There was multiple car and property damage from Swinger Hill to Gowrie in October of this year. In Gaunson Crescent, Wanniassa, there have been multiple break-ins over the last 12 months. In Jackie Howe Crescent, Gilmore, there have been repeated acts of letterbox vandalism over the last 12 months. These are quality-of-life issues in suburbia for which the government is not providing a service to prevent these things happening.

Mr Speaker, I have referred a number of times to front-line police numbers. I have referred a number of times to the need for community policing. Community policing is all about delivering a better police service out into suburbia. We need to see the community policing program, which the government does have in place, enhanced. Residents in suburbia rarely see their police. They don't know who their police are. This is the sort of service the government must be focusing on.

Mr Speaker, I refer to some other suburban services. In regard to parking, there is the unacceptable situation of paid parking for students at Tuggeranong College. I know

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