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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2979 ..

MR HARGREAVES (11.21): Mr Pratt loves a boy in a uniform. His whole speech was about the police. The Justice and Community Safety portfolio is a little bit more than just the police. For example, it has corrective services in it. I do not hear Mr Pratt saying how he is going to have innovative programs in the corrective services to stop these people vandalising the back of Chisholm shops. I do not see him congratulating the capital works program for the increased lighting at the back of the Chisholm shops. All I hear is his bleating and saying we need extra police.

I would like to put on the record again something I said in the lead-up to the last election. I said the Labor Party would provide an extra 20 police—in fact, the figure we were talking about was 30 extra police. But that was a case of saying to the Liberal Party “I will see your 10 and raise you 20.” The Liberal Party promised 10 extra police. The Labor Party said, “We’ll put it up by a further 20.” Guess what has happened over the past couple of years? It has gone up by that figure.

I would like Mr Pratt, in this place, to do what I did last time. I committed the Labor government to an extra 20 police during the term, and that is what has been delivered. I challenge Mr Pratt to do what I did, commit your so-called incoming government to 120 police officers in the next term. Commit your shadow Treasurer, yourself and your party to $12 million worth of expense. I do not think he has the courage to do it, and I think he will squirm out of that policy promise as soon as he can. If he has the courage of his convictions, he will promise the voters of the ACT $12 million out of their urban services budget, out of their health budget, out of their education budget, for his police officers.

MS DUNDAS (11.23): In relation to the JACS portfolio: it was pleasing to see money finally being allocated to the prison project. I hope the government takes due consideration of the recent report of the Community Services and Social Equity Committee in relation to ongoing programs and family support that need to be targeted around what we are doing with our prison. I also hope that the government looks back at the community consultation at the end of the last Assembly in relation to the prison project and work that was done specifically with women’s groups and remembers how important it is, if we are going to have both male and female prisoners remaining in the ACT, that they are housed separately. A number of important issues were covered in depth at the end of the last Assembly, and I hope the government has not lost that work.

It was also pleasing to see funding in this budget for the restorative justice unit and some support to help reduce recidivism. That is a very important part of crime prevention techniques. The Estimates Committee had similar concerns to the Community Services and Social Equity Committee in relation to the work of watchdog agencies and how they report on the things they are watching over. I take heart at the government’s response to the Estimates Committee by saying that the new annual reports directions for 2004 will ask external scrutiny agencies to include a section specifically for issues of significant concern in relation to the agency’s performance.

Hopefully in next year’s annual reports we will be able to find that information a lot easier. Of course, we hope nothing is going wrong, so we do not need that area of the report. But the government responded by saying that the annual reports directions already require agencies to report on external scrutiny and statutory entities are already

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