Page 823 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
folk, people who had been subject to a lot of burglaries, until about two years ago. They said that enough was enough and they established themselves. They had a very robust committee when I visited them and had a number of meetings about 18 months ago. They also had, of course, a good relationship with the police. That is also a secret ingredient. You have got to have that relationship, otherwise the committee simply cannot achieve its aims.
I know the police are particularly concerned at the waning interest in Neighbourhood Watch committees, and so something needs to be done to assist suburbs to regenerate their committees and to get things back on the road. Perhaps this is partly because volunteerism across Australia and, indeed, across most developed countries is on the wane as well. That is not being tough on people: life is just so much faster now. People do not have as much time as they once had to commit to their communities.
The police are, indeed, looking for ways to try to regenerate enthusiasm. Why? Because the police rely on Neighbourhood Watch committees to provide some of the community-based intelligence that police need to be able to gather. I must say this: the work that I have seen undertaken by the police in their liaison roles with Neighbourhood Watch committees has been very good work. Where the police have got a strong relationship with a Neighbourhood Watch committee, the combination is very successful. A lot of good work is done; a number of issues are, indeed, resolved.
If we can just go back to Isaacs for a moment: there is an issue, of course, that I think is probably one of the issues that have sparked an interest in the last year and driven the enthusiasm in that Isaacs Neighbourhood Watch committee. Isaacs shops has been subject to a lot of burglaries over the last four to five years and a number of shops, particularly the smallgoods grocery there, have been burgled three to four times each.
In addition, Isaacs shopping centre in the last eight months has seen the dealing of drugs being undertaken, not only after hours but—for God’s sake—even in broad daylight. People between the ages of 16 and 30 actually set up shop in the car park and have been dealing, indeed quite brazenly. People have come to use the public phone box right next to the front door of the shop at the Isaacs grocery without any fear or concern of being caught.
I know that has been reported to the police and I do know that undercover police have responded. But, again, because we do not have enough police, they have not been able to do much about it. It is thought that, in that Isaacs/southern Woden Valley area, these people move from shopping centre to shopping centre. They know that there is only so much the police can do, given that police numbers are too small.
I want to turn to Neighbourhood Watch’s role in the community policing strategy. We, on this side of the house, regard community policing as essential to good ACT policing. Community policing is a fundamental plank in policing. Whilst the definition “community policing” is used, we do not believe that ACT police are effectively carrying out community policing. Essentially the reason is that they do not have the resources and they do not have the numbers to be able to provide the presence of policing out into the group shopping centres and suburban areas in general.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .