Page 886 - Week 03 - Thursday, 30 March 2006
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They could not arrive there until 1½ hours later. By that time the hoons had left. In that instance, the owner had to ring up a couple of mates and get them to come down to stop potentially violent situations occurring with his customers. Luckily, no one was hurt, but it was quite scary for the people there.
The police want to do their job. They want to have the resources to do it. They want to be able to get out there and actually protect the community. I will come to a few things that the government can do there. Mr Pratt rightly rails against the government’s incompetence in terms of providing the necessary resources for policing. The most fundamental role of any government is to protect the security of its citizens as best it can. That does mean having a well-resourced police force that is able to do the job, with the necessary backup from a legislature such as this one.
In terms of resourcing, in 1980 Canberra had about 200,000 people and Woden had five police cars available for a much smaller area. Incidentally, it had about the same number of sworn police, uniformed police, as it has now. There are now only two and there are about 120,000 or 130,000 people more than there were 25 years ago. The resourcing for policing certainly has not kept going with the size of the territory and that in itself is a problem. The police do need backup. I said that the legislature can help. The police need backup when they go to court, and that simply is not happening
There is something that this legislature can do. It can give police the powers they need to do their job properly. Perhaps it should recreate some of the offences that used to be there when we had the old summary offences ordinance, which would at least give police the knowledge that they are backed by their Assembly, that they are backed by the elected representatives of the ACT to do their job properly.
It does concern me when I hear of three members of the city beat squad being pelted with ice, having drunken hoons swear at them and abuse them and being unable to do anything. In terms of legislative backup, all they have these days is a very broad offence of offensive behaviour, and that has been truncated by various decisions not only here but also in the New South Wales courts, which certainly has not helped police. You might like to back up your police by having a few additional offences, such as ones for swearing and abusive language in a public place and perhaps for fighting in a public place.
I know that my committee, the legal affairs committee, had an inquiry—I think it was the Taser inquiry—that actually got into police powers for crowd control and move-on powers were mentioned. I always take great pride in having introduced those powers, but that happened as a result of a committee inquiry and they were watered down somewhat more than they should be. Initially, they were based on the South Australian powers.
The police started to talk about the need to improve those so that they could assist them. They are of some assistance, but they need refining and they need toughening up. The minister shut them down pretty quickly there. All right, he had a right to do that, but I think it shows an attitude of not wanting to back up the police by giving them the tools to do the trade in terms of resourcing and the sensible legislative backup they need from this place so that they can arrest people and take them to court. We cannot interfere too much in how the courts operate, but we can give suggestions, directions, additional
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