Page 1488 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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opposition, and even the police recognise this. There is no way we can have proper intelligence-based policing, for God’s sake, if there are not enough officers out in the community to gather that intelligence.
If the government are serious about their claims that more police are not necessarily needed, then why will they not release what the Costello functional review has to say about policing in the ACT? That is a question we have been asking for some time now. Why will they not release the result of the review into police resources and the time and motion study? Why will they not release any details of the new police agreement with the AFP which is, unfortunately, now 14 months overdue? What is taking the government so long? What do they have to hide?
That is why the opposition today calls for the government to table the internal studies, the Costello functional review and also details of the progress it has made with the police agreement. We are deeply concerned that ACT Policing is terribly overstretched and we want action from the government to address that. We want the studies I have referred to and the police agreement itself, the draft police agreement or other documents referring to the ongoing negotiations about the police agreement, to be presented here for the Assembly to examine.
The previous police minister, Mr Hargreaves, received the details of the police review almost a year ago, yet we have heard nothing about the findings of this review from the government. This makes us wonder to what extent the government has a problem with whatever is in that review—whether or not it clearly shows that it is not funding the number of police the review asks for.
I want to have a look at a number of ACT Policing activities to illustrate how under strength ACT Policing must really be. Let us have a look at random breath tests—drink-driving. The December quarterly ACT Policing trends report, tabled in the Legislative Assembly this week, shows that 33,501 random breath tests were conducted throughout 2005—that is, 23,700 or 41.4 per cent fewer breath tests than in 2004.
The Stanhope government has failed to make random breath testing a greater priority, and because of this motorists do not fear driving home from the pub after a few drinks. They know that an RBT unit is very rarely seen on the roadside. Members of the public often say to me, “I can’t remember the last time I saw an RBT,” or, “I don’t know whether I have actually seen one.” These sorts of comments disturb me but I often find myself agreeing with them. What do the Costello review and these internal reviews state about the deployment of patrols such as RBTs? If there is a logical reason why they can diminish the number of patrols by 41.4 per cent, let us see what the review says.
On the other hand, I support the government’s move to focus RBTs more locally into higher-risk areas. If, as the government claims, they are getting the same drink-driving arrest rate with a lesser number of better targeted RBTs, then one might almost buy the argument that this is a new efficiency. I think that, in this last period, they have arrested more people for drink-driving than was the case a couple of years ago, so that is an interesting number.
The question of efficiency cannot be ignored, but I wonder why another 30,000 or 40,000 RBTs conducted in other non-focus areas would not also snag drink-drivers. I
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