Page 455 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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MR SPEAKER: Come on, withdraw that!
MR HARGREAVES: All right, I withdraw it, Mr Speaker; he does know the difference between truth and clay. He came into this chamber yesterday on this very issue—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hargreaves! We went through that this morning. I am not going to have those sorts of unparliamentary jousts going on in the chamber. Just withdraw it.
MR HARGREAVES: All right, Mr Speaker, I will pull away from that and withdraw it. Yesterday, Mr Pratt came into this house and talked about gangs of people running round the place and the police emergency response. I sought details from the police on the incidents that Mr Pratt alluded to yesterday and I shall give details about them at the end of question time.
Mr Smyth: Good. Why don’t you answer this question?
Mr Quinlan: Why don’t you shut up?
Mr Smyth: Why don’t you leave now?
MR HARGREAVES: I think that Mr Pratt will be exposed for putting little bits of stories forward.
MR SPEAKER: Order! It is a bit hard to say which side to go for. Mr Smyth, enough is enough.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, when Mr Pratt stands up and talks about community safety I instantly suspect that he is cherry picking a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So, in checking out his outrageous statements of yesterday, I have found that there is a lot more to the story than people would see from his statements, and I have it to the second. When I advise the house of it after question time, I suspect that Mr Pratt will be embarrassed yet again.
MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, let’s see whether we can get an answer this time. Minister, what is your response to the small businesses in the Erindale centre that are very concerned about the level of criminal activity in the vicinity of their shops? What is your response to their concerns, if you have any?
MR HARGREAVES: My response to those traders is the same as my response to the traders at the Calwell shops, the Chisholm shops and anywhere else where people have brought these things to my attention. I am more than happy either to discuss with them, or have the police come down to discuss with them, the security arrangements to see the police responses. In fact, I have advanced that invitation on numerous occasions. It has been taken up and I have not had any queries since then.
I wonder sometimes whether what we are seeing is, in fact, an invitation from Mr Pratt to these people saying, “I think your place is in danger. Perhaps you had better do something about it,” in the same way as he sent a letter to all of the residents of Kambah
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