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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2658 ..

This year $86 million will be spent on ACT Policing and in 2004-05 we will be spending $90 million. This is a lot of money to be spending. The Auditor-General has found that the policing agreements have not given the government proper financial control over the services provided and the ACT government is doing little to ensure value for money. This does not impact just on the economic bottom line; as I have indicated, this impacts on the social bottom line for our community.

The Auditor-General reported that, where agreed services have not been provided, no action was taken by the government—and the government has not investigated whether the price the AFP charges is reasonable. The ACT government needs to take some responsibility for the state of policing in the ACT. They cannot continue to say, “We pay for our contract with the AFP and it is up to the AFP to decide what happens in the ACT.”

That is not good enough. We can no longer have this buck-passing. We need government responsibility; we need to ensure that the programs we are prioritising for delivery are being delivered; and we need to ensure that we have crime prevention working here in the territory. Police services are available to the community. If we are not getting what we are paying for and if we are not seeing the social benefits of that, then the government needs to be doing more to ensure that that is going to occur.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (3.55): I have to say that, compared to many MPIs of recent times, this MPI does contribute something to the debate in this place. I would also, as a sometime police minister, have to confess that I feel I failed to get to the base of the contract between the AFP and the ACT, as did ministers before me. I know Mr Humphries tried hard. We are now on the way to a review, which is going to take some time; nevertheless, it is a great step forward. Mr Humphries certainly battled manfully with this one; I am not sure that Mr Smyth did; I do not know.

Mr Smyth: Operation Anchorage, Mr Quinlan!

MR QUINLAN: Was that your idea?

Mr Smyth: We worked very hard.

MR QUINLAN: I was not even talking about the operations, I was talking about whether you tried to get to the bottom of the arrangement for payment between the AFP and the ACT.

Mr Smyth: We did.

MR QUINLAN: You got to the bottom of that?

Mr Smyth: We got close.

MR QUINLAN: Mate, I will be down to see you to get a briefing, because I have to say that it seemed to me to be an ill-defined process based on results. Let us refer to results. We will have to accept that the results have been pretty good, but I share some of the

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