Page 2191 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 June 2005
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MR HARGREAVES: No, you cannot wait. The first thing you do is open your mouth and then you start thinking—in that order—and I suggest to you that perhaps you ought to be less precipitant in what you say. We do not have desperadoes going around this town. Mr Pratt has a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes up a police force. He would know, if he had bothered to ask anybody with a modicum of intelligence, that we have an intelligence-led policing system. We have squads—we have traffic offences, we have drug offences, we have sex offences, we have organised crime, we have outlaw motorcycle gangs and we have a whole range of other offences—which address crime levels in this town according to the intelligence-led policing model.
From where do they get the intelligence? Certainly not from Mr Pratt, because he is decidedly lacking in it. They get it from the community, from people dialling Crime Stoppers and putting together a dossier of complaints. And what happens? Mr Pratt belittles the handling of burnouts. On the one hand he says that we are not doing enough and on the other he says that we are doing great. I have to say that, through Jon Stanhope’s original initiative back in 2001, carried through by this government, we have a really top-notch crime fighting process in this town. As we increase the numbers, it will be even better.
I have to say that Mr Pratt really ought to just sit and think for a little while about the impact of his words out there. I suggest that he should seriously think about that. Mr Pratt, if you are too precipitant with your misinformation—whether it be accidental or deliberate I do not care—you unnecessarily alarm people. It would be far better for you to encourage people to ring Crime Stoppers and to encourage people, as Mr Gentleman did, to come and talk to us when we speak with the community and the police officers. We are quite happy to join in a group with members of the community and police officers because that is proactive policing. We do that. We actually talk to them. We do not alarm them.
I suggest very, very seriously, Mr Pratt, that you consider the responsibilities of your office. If you want to know how to do it, go back into Hansard and see how often I frightened them. I did not. I did not have to. I was more interested in working with the police to make sure that what they were doing was understood and appreciated by our community. You say that you have police officers telling you this and police officers telling you that. No doubt you do, but you should be considering what they are saying to you responsibly and considering the impact of your words. Members of this Assembly are community leaders and should act accordingly. I encourage you to do just that.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (5.17): I would like to say a few words in support of Mr Pratt’s motion because it is an issue on which I have taken more than a passing interest. This issue is central to the concerns that many in the community continue to raise not only with the shadow minister for police but also with many of his parliamentary colleagues here. I hear what the minister says about not causing undue alarm in the community. I do not think any of us are in the business of creating undue alarm but I also think that, as members of the Assembly, we have a duty to respond in a proactive and positive fashion when we hear of repeated problems.
A swallow does not make a summer and one complaint here and there one would obviously refer on, or see if one could achieve a resolution. But when you get a large
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