Page 2777 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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MR PRATT: Dr Foskey, bear with me. They were urinating all over shopfront walls. That is quite a serious issue. These guys were desecrating this shopping centre. In that particular incident the police were called, but for some reason they did not take action. I find that deeply disappointing, as do the shopkeepers and the residents of Charnwood—quite seriously.
Pockets of suburbia are under fairly regular criminal attack from repeat offenders who are known to the victims. The most recent case brought to me, as recently as last Saturday, was in Crichton Crescent in Kambah where, over a period of three months, 21 letterboxes have been either stolen, destroyed or repeatedly destroyed. There has been mail theft and pipe bombs going off in the parkland just behind that particular crescent. I have witnessed what appears to be a bullet hole in the roof of a residence in that place. Again, the disappointing thing is that police have only been able to respond twice to what would appear to be about 26 or 27 calls for assistance.
I have written to the minister about that. I await his response. I have nothing more to say about that, except that it is important to illustrate here tonight that that is the sort of issue that residents are bringing to our attention. They are concerned that the police capacity simply is not there to be able to respond and round up the young men involved. They just seem to be powerless to speak to them and perhaps intervene and stop these things escalating. There are many more examples, but time prohibits me raising them. I am sure that Dr Foskey and others will be happy to hear that. Quite seriously, we can now move to a higher plane, perhaps.
The joint policing study shows up what the opposition, the AFPA and concerned police, ex-police and residents have been saying for about four years: our police are seriously understrength and their capability has been run down. The government sat on this study, despite it being completed in June 2005. It seems that they were fearful of being caught out, having perhaps cooked the numbers on exactly what the effective police strength was and the numbers facing them. Now they have had to release that study. At least that study forms a good basis for the government to now do something about this capability. I suggest it also forms a good basis for carrying out perhaps a higher level capability study, one that takes a very broad look at the entire ACT community policing needs—not just a look at the functional issues that the joint study has examined but a more strategic-level look at what the ACT police establishment really needs to be for the future. I hope the government does that.
I now talk briefly about the police agreement. The police agreement is extremely late but, thank God, it is here. Again, the opposition believes that the police agreement is a loose and too flexible instrument. It needs to be task oriented rather than contain the rather fleshy outcomes that it does. We believe the ACT community deserves to better know what service it is buying for its money. When this minister goes to the AFP, he needs to have a more concrete police agreement that allows him to purchase a much more concrete service so that his community gets the service that they deserve and that they need.
On experience levels, police station sergeants have been unhappy for three or more years that their police station teams and patrols are overmanned by probationary constables and that experienced constables are too thin on the ground. On RBT and RDT, we need
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