Page 1461 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 April 2005
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Mr Hargreaves talks a lot about intelligence-based policing, and I do not dispute the merit of that, but there is something that is irreplaceable about just being out there in the community, having a patrol car out on the streets, having a presence out in the community that people can see, so that people can feel safe. You can do all the intelligence-based policing that you like, but if you are not there on the scene it is often difficult to prevent crime. That is one of the concerns in the community and that is, to a large degree, a numbers and resourcing game: if you do not have the numbers, they cannot be out there, they cannot be all over Canberra.
One of the difficulties that police face has been a change in community attitudes over the past 20 to 30 years. People are becoming more disassociated, I guess, from their neighbours. One of the things that kept people very secure was that they knew all the people in their street and they knew that, if they went away, their neighbours would notice if there was someone hanging around who should not be there. I think that has changed. That is something that we as a community all bear responsibility for, but that has obviously changed the nature of policing, in that I guess that means a greater workload for police and a greater call on police because of the changing face of Canberra neighbourhoods. It is not just Canberra, of course; it is the same around the country and, I would say, around the world.
In particular, I would like to talk a little bit about Gungahlin. In Gungahlin, I think there are about 30,000 residents at the moment and it is growing rapidly. It is about the only area of Canberra that is expanding significantly, and not to have a police presence there after 6.00 pm does cause a lot of people in the Gungahlin area real concern. I have spoken to police at the Belconnen station about how at any one time there are often only one or two cars out in the area. After hours, Belconnen also services Gungahlin, so there are 90,000-odd people who live in Belconnen and 30,000-odd in Gungahlin, spread out over a fairly big area, and yet only one or two patrol cars. It is very difficult for them to respond in a timely manner to incidents, and that really is what the concern is in the community.
Dr Foskey spoke earlier about how the level of crime is relatively low in Gungahlin, but there is that unreported crime and there is that lower level crime that Mr Mulcahy referred to. If people do not think that the police are going to get there quickly, they are not going to report the burnouts, the minor vandalism or other things. But those things are still a concern and they still affect people’s lives.
Mr Smyth: Or they get sick of reporting them.
MR SESELJA: That is right—or they get sick of reporting them so they do not report them any more. Obviously, that underreporting can also affect the crime rates and the crime statistics, and I would suggest that it is more likely that there will be underreporting where people do not have the confidence that they will see a response, especially where they do not have confidence that they will see a quick response. That is the major point I want to make. I call on the government to look at the issues in Gungahlin. I do not know when the government feels that it is going to be appropriate for Gungahlin station to have a permanent police presence, but I would suggest that the time is now.
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