Page 1394 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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an unreasonable amount of time. These current shortcomings, which exist both in front-line policing operations and in crime-processing duties—the important initial steps that lead into bringing offenders before the courts—are inefficient and fail to serve the community effectively.
Let us turn to recidivism. The failure of the Stanhope government to properly support police and judicial systems to stem recidivist offenders is reflected in the ACT’s clearance rates for crime. The shortfall in police resources in the ACT is blatantly obvious in the slow follow-through of criminal investigations. That is why we have a dismal clearance rate for crime in the ACT, and this strongly contributes to weaknesses in the judicial system. One has to question how many cases could have been finalised, and in a more timely fashion, if resourcing had been addressed much sooner by this government.
Turning to police numbers, the issue that Mr Corbell raised in his speech, let me just remind him that the Productivity Commission report 2005 shows that the ACT is well below the national average for police, sworn and unsworn. The Productivity Commission estimates put the ACT at around 130 sworn police officers below the national average. That is to say we need to have an increase of over 20 per cent in the sworn police strength of our ACT police force, just to achieve the national benchmark for sworn police officers. The AFPA strongly agrees with this position. It has been calling on the government for a long time to increase police numbers in the ACT. Previously, in opposition, this minister’s colleagues called for a rise in police strengths up to the national average. Something has changed.
With a poorly resourced police force, how can the community expect to be sufficiently protected? The police are responsible for upholding the law and for helping to ensure that justice can be served in our community. The police also need to have the confidence and the backing of the judicial system. When a government that fails to adequately resource police places police under unnecessary pressures, as we now have with our judicial system, things do not progress through the justice system as they should and the community suffers as a result. I reject Mr Corbell’s rubbery-figures approach to determine what is an adequate police strength for our environment.
It is very clear that there is a lack of police presence in our community anyway. This is the constant feedback. We know that there is a lack of proactive police patrols. We know that Richardson shopkeepers, for example, state that they have not seen for years a proactive police patrol to ask: “How are things going, fellas? What is the local intelligence? What is going on here?” We get the same sort of response from Erindale shopkeepers and Red Hill shopkeepers, and I refer to feedback and information that we have collected in the last couple of months. It is this lack of a proactive police patrolling presence that people are concerned about, particularly in shopping centres, some of which are hard hit by what I call this low-level crime and vandalism.
The frustration of Canberrans in having a home burglary or a car theft adequately dealt with is highlighted in the 2004-05 ACT police annual report. Let us have a look at the clearance rate: only 35 per cent of the almost 40,000 of these sorts of offences were cleared. With burglary, it was 6.1 per cent; total burglary of dwellings, shops and others was seven per cent; vehicle and vessel theft was 9.6 per cent; total theft or illegal use of a vehicle was 7.8 per cent; and total property damage was 9.8 per cent. These are the sorts
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