Page 1444 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 April 2005
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the number of people in the ACT concerned with housebreaking is 78.2 per cent, 7.7 per cent above the national average. In total, according to the 2003-04 report, 44,564 criminal offences were recorded in the ACT in 2003-04, more than twice that of the first half of the 1990s. There has been a significant increase in crime in the ACT, per capita, in the last 10 years.
The ACT community in general, community lobby groups, and former and serving police are expressing a range of concerns with increasing frequency, commensurate with a clear decline in police capabilities. This government is allowing the gradual rundown of our police force to continue. While generally doing a good job, the police force simply cannot keep pace with all the declining trends in community behaviour affecting community safety.
I intend to illustrate this situation by giving examples of a range of criminal incidents in general, including the degree and frequency of lower level crime—crime that is of a lower level but which is still quite dangerous and quite disruptive to the community. Let us look at a number of those. In late 2004, there was a range of concerns about illegal fireworks and vandalism, such as the blowing up of letterboxes in Wanniassa, and police not turning up to investigate. To quote a resident, “Powerful explosives are used by kids in this area every weekend and the police seem totally impotent in dealing with it.”
In February 2005, shop vandalism and property damage: a second-hand shop in Braddon advised customers in an advertisement about new stock that the shop window had been boarded up after vandalism. There was, in November 2004, at Black Mountain Peninsula, lewd activities in a public place. The ACT government did not show any willingness to ensure a police follow-up on these sorts of reports and instead criticised the people who had lodged the complaints.
In August 2004, break-ins not attended to and fingerprints not taken: Tuggeranong residents reported to the police a car break-in and damage to stereo equipment, but the police did follow-up in investigating this issue. A similar response by police, or lack of it, was received for a series of break-ins at Gungahlin recently when police failed to attend or follow up at the crime scene. Road rage: police unable to follow up or unwilling to follow up reports by a woman that she was tailed from Gungahlin to Belconnen because they simply could not do anything about it as there were no independent witnesses.
We have had a number of instances in the last year of bullying in schools and at bus interchanges. We have received reports from families of their kids suffering bullying and low-level violence at bus interchanges and never seeing a policeman in these places. There were break-ins at the Telstra building in Dickson and other commercial premises there. Again, no fingerprints were taken. We have had articles in the papers in recent times in which hoons have admitted that they can engage in illegal street racing with impunity; they do not fear recrimination. Since November 2004, burnouts have been an ongoing problem, with a litany of complaints coming from residents in Norriss and Proctor streets, Chisholm, in Learmonth Drive, Kambah, in Knoke Avenue, Gordon, in Woden and generally throughout Amaroo and Gungahlin, to mention just a few.
Graffiti and other property damage is another example. Who is the guy “Axiom” who has graffitied Adelaide Avenue and other arterial roads over a distance of 15 kilometres
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