Page 2786 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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Those figures need to be sorted out. They have not been to date. I think it is quite a massive anomaly that there was a grants commission submission only a couple of years ago which apparently, if we are to believe the answers we have received to questions on notice, were so wrong. The minister might want to answer that. We are certainly putting further questions on notice about the percentage at the time of arrest. I think there might be some changes in the figures if you look at pre-sentencing versus pre-arrest as people’s postcodes and addresses might change sometimes in the significant time it takes from arrest to conviction.
Mr Speaker, we have concerns about the projections for recurrent expenditure, we have concerns about the government’s ability to stay within its $128 million budget and we certainly have concerns about some of the figures that have been put forward. It is incumbent upon the government to clarify that now and let us know why we apparently had such flawed figures going to the grants commission only a couple of years ago.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (2.04 am): Mr Speaker, I would hate to see what happens when Mr Seselja does not have regard to the time.
Mr Seselja: I did not take my extra 10 minutes.
MR CORBELL: No, indeed you did not. Thank goodness for that. Mr Speaker, very quickly, the government will not be supporting the amendment. The Chief Minister has outlined the reasons for that. I will only add one thing to that argument; that is, that the issue of where prisoners reside prior to being charged or convicted of an offence in the ACT is really a furphy because when someone is convicted of an offence in the ACT they are our prisoner. They are sentenced subsequent to having been convicted of an offence against the law of the ACT.
That is no different from what happens if an ACT resident is charged with and convicted of an offence in Queensland. They do not get sent back to the ACT automatically. They go into a Queensland prison. I can name a number of ACT residents who have been charged and sentenced for offences in the Northern Territory and Queensland and who are currently residing in Northern Territory and Queensland prisons. So to suggest that where they were residing prior to their offence somehow diminishes the role or requirement for the prison is simply wrong. That aside, the government has clarified the figures and the figures provided to the Assembly committee are accurate.
I welcome the opposition’s support for the provision of additional police. We commissioned a joint study. The joint study was a joint process between the AFP, ACT Policing, and the ACT government. It concluded that 107 additional police officers were required. We have provided funding since 2004 to provide that full figure. That, I think, is the appropriate response to an issue important to the ACT community. I note that members of the opposition are now saying that they do not believe 107 is enough. That would seem to suggest that they do not believe the joint study and, indeed, the work that the AFP and the ACT government did on that, but that is probably all down to Mr Pratt’s preference that you can never have enough police.
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