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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2654 ..

Let me come back to the point Mr Pratt was pushing. You can always bring up dire circumstances; there is no doubt about that. The ACT is not the place it might have been, although it is still very safe. As I said, I can go upstairs and bring down the various clippings I have kept over the period that show quite shocking headlines—for what notice you take of them—in the media when you, Mr Stefaniak, were police minister I expect, and Mr Smyth or Mr Humphries, who I think was the longest serving police minister. The same things were said then, Mr Pratt. What is the difference? The difference is that crime is well controlled. It is well controlled because, among other things, we have very good chief police officers here, and they have more police to work with than you ever provided them with.

MR STEFANIAK (3.39): The figures that have been given in the last few days indicate quite clearly—and I will take them at their highest for the Labor Party—that there were something like 600 or so police 20 years ago and, at best, the figures now are around 800. That is not a huge number when one considers that Queanbeyan, with about 10 per cent of the population of the ACT, and a reasonable sized geographic district, has about 167 to whatever our figures are now—700 and something. Quite clearly the evidence is there that we need an extra 120 or so police. We are about 120 short of the national average—and numbers do count.

Mr Wood, in answer to a couple of points you raised, a lot of very experienced police, many of whom I know personally, have been deployed to a number of trouble spots around the world. That probably did not happen so much when I was minister because I was minister for only about eight weeks but, from time to time, police will be deployed. In fact, I was giving out commendations to those coming back from Timor.

The Chief Minister said on ABC radio last week that he did not know exactly how many police we have; the number changes daily and it depends on the deployment as per the AFP daily plan. Mick Keelty said on the radio today that the ACT gets the police it pays for, and that is quite so. You cannot get away from the fact that you need sufficient police to do certain roles—to undertake crime prevention and service the operational regions.

The AFP says that in Belconnen, for example—they also look after Gungahlin after dark—we need four police cars, as we have for some time. What have we got? Two police cars. I suspect it is somewhat the same for Woden. I am not going to go on about police horses because, after all, that would be only two people. Certainly during the time of the previous government there were some police horse patrols used, and they did a good job. There were also the bike patrols, which did some particularly good jobs.

In my time in the Assembly I have never had so many complaints from people saying they have rung the police station and either the police have not been able to come or the phone has rung out. I would be the last person to blame the men and women of the Australian police force for that. Having dealt with them extensively as a prosecutor and also during my time in this Assembly, I have the utmost regard for their professionalism and their great desire to do the best possible job properly. You cannot get away from the fact that that makes it very hard if they are stretched to the limit because of insufficient numbers.

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