Page 474 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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through, and say, “I am concerned about the safety of the community.” I know whose safety you are concerned about, buster. And I would be too. The point here is that Mr Smyth has available a whole raft of information which needs to be verified, obviously. Given the events of the last 24, 25, 26 hours or so, it would seem obvious there would need to be a significant amount of verification.
What we had was this incident in which someone from Mr Smyth’s family was injured in what was obviously an unsavoury incident, an incident that we all should be concerned about. But that turned into some anonymous question about rampaging gangs. That is when it was dramatised for the purpose of political gain. Your own family, Mr Smyth! The approach that has been taken by the opposition in this is appalling. The point you want to try to make, and the point you are trying to get across to the community, is that there are not enough police and that this government is not supplying enough police.
The facts are that, in the time that we have been in government, one of the difficulties we have faced in this town is a lack of growth in population. But we have seen since this government came to power an increase of 50 or 60 in police numbers—a significant increase, given that we do not have population increases but we have an increase in the complement of police. You have obviously got some police per thousand increase ratio. What is it an increase over? It is an increase over what you provided previously. That is what it is. It is simple mathematics: virtually no population growth, 60 more police; therefore, there is quite clearly an increase in resources.
What do you see as a result of the increase in resources? You see a decrease in crime. We have not got, unfortunately, a total elimination of crime. In the future, there will be crime in this city, in this territory. If you look at the world through the prism of a single incident, you will make a whole lot of different conclusions than if you take an overall, broader view. Of course you do not want to do that. And that is why you have come in here and virtually supplied no detail, except “rampaging gangs”. Yes, dramatise it, and then say, “Minister, why have you failed to resource the police because there are rampaging gangs?” That is, quite frankly, appalling politics.
I absolutely support the move that the Chief Minister has taken in putting his motion on the table, because it has drawn out the problem now. We know what we are dealing with. We know that we have had a couple of unfortunate incidents. We have now got the facts, I think, in relation to the time it took to respond and why, and what the response process was. That is all very reasonable in itself, I would suggest. It therefore paints a completely different picture than the picture that was painted here yesterday by Mr Pratt because you dramatised it. You are dramatising for political gain. Then we get Mr Smyth speaking about the incident at the show.
Mr Smyth: One of the—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you are a serial interjector. I am going to warn you next time.
MR QUINLAN: We get a rolling out of the detail. If that happened, whether I was in opposition or not, why on earth would you not put that information together and give it to the minister and say, “There is a serious problem here; this is something that we really need to look at,” if that is the way you think about it? But you did not. Why? “Better
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