Page 1134 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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cracks. The existing quid pro quo arrangement, which allows the AFP to move ACT community policing personnel in and out between ACT and national or international policing tasks, can be advantageous; it can deliver some additional services to our community. But on balance this arrangement is not serving the ACT well.
The community and the police need certainty. The functional review hopefully identified this need. For example, communities need to be able to identify with police patrols dedicated to their areas, and police need to have consistency in their work and where they work. The current agreement fails to meet these fundamental police service requirements, and surely the Costello review must see this. If it does not, one would need to ask: has the review been worth all that effort?
Further examples of where the police agreement is failing lie in the vagueness of its objectives. A stark example of where the standards have been allowed to erode because of the agreement’s loose objectives is the eroding of the random breath-testing operation. The agreement lays down an objective for drink-driving, something to the effect of: let us reduce drink-driving. That is the outcome: reduce drink-driving. Such an objective written as a vague outcome allows for slackness—and when governments are seeking cuts or savings they will rely on those vague objectives to move things around. As a result, we have seen the gradual downgrading of the RBT program. The RBT program demise is a fundamental example of where this agreement fails. This is precisely what happened, no doubt in order to save money. The program was reduced by more than 50 per cent. A firm police agreement objective with a benchmark stipulating, for example, “undertake a minimum of 108,000 RBTs per annum” would—
Mr Hargreaves: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have been listening to Mr Pratt’s last few comments and I am just not sure what relevance the comments that he is making in relation to the policing agreement have to the functional review. Perhaps he could show us that relevance or move on.
MR SPEAKER: I think that is the point he is making: he can’t show you the relevance. But this is a debate about the functional review and I think it is pretty clear that it could impact on all area of government services.
MR PRATT: On the point of order: I am illustrating the functioning of police and whether that is efficient. Take that for an example. That would be a benchmark that could be measured, so the big question I ask is: has the functional review even considered the current ACT policing agreement? If it has not, the review has obviously not gone deep enough into the operation of police services in the ACT. And, if the ACT policing service has not even been subject to the functional review’s findings, this functional review is simply not delivering a service to this community or this Chief Minister and his cabinet.
If the review has considered the scope of ACT Policing, has the review even found any concerns with the existing police agreement? Perhaps it has, and perhaps this has helped the Stanhope government to keep the review under wraps—out of sheer embarrassment. Perhaps the review did not touch upon the issue of policing expenditure, as it is clearly already known that ACT Policing is under strength through a lack of support from this government. It would look quite ridiculous if the review identified areas where funding needed to be increased so that to make budget cuts within ACT Policing would lead to a
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