Page 3343 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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houses. It is people who have got young kids, teenagers and young adult visitors constantly riding a lot of trail bikes around the neighbourhood.
The problem here is that this just goes in cycles. The police are constantly called out but they cannot always tackle these issues. I put it to the government that the problem is a whole-of-government problem, a multidepartmental problem and a housing management problem as well.
I have talked before about Richardson shops and the constant vandalism of that poor little shopping centre, again by youths who are known to live in local government housing. In Wanniassa there is talk of neighbours constantly dealing in drugs and violence. In Macarthur, in Fraser Court in Kingston and in Chisholm, the story is the same. Indeed, a person in Chisholm referred to “people coming at all hours of the night and parking at the front of our house with their car lights pointed directly into our house to wake our family up”. These neighbours, who are people living in government housing, are reported to the housing department, but nothing seems to be done. In Scullin, the situation is the same. Retirees who have lived there for 30-odd years cannot get any protection or support from the neighbours.
The underlying problem is that people living in public housing complexes or single public houses are monstering their fellow public housing tenants, the majority of whom are peaceful, law-abiding people, but they are also impacting severely on the neighbourhood. They have been identified and the department of housing simply is doing nothing about it. These people do not deserve to be living in these neighbourhoods. They are not good neighbours; they are letting our neighbourhoods down. This government is doing nothing about identifying those people and bringing law and order to those neighbourhoods.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (5.13): Here we go again with another attempt to sensationalise and politicise law and order in prime debate. As I have said before, I am certain that here in the ACT we would hope to try and avoid the extreme politicisation of these issues, as has happened in some other jurisdictions. That only leads to very poor public policy and increased community fear to a disproportionate level.
It is irresponsible, really, to feel such fears, especially when we know that the reality is quite different. In proposing such a discussion Mr Pratt seems to be suggesting that crime is out of control in this city. Is this really the case?
Mr Pratt: Did I say that?
MR CORBELL: That is not what the crime indicators that are publicly available show. Mr Pratt talked about restoring law and order to suburbs. The suggestion is that there is a lack of law and order in suburbs. So, yes, he is making that suggestion. Let us look at how crime indicators stand overall. These indicators are based on independent reports. For example, the recently released ABS report ACT in focus 2006 shows an overall drop of 12 per cent in the number of offences reported for 2004-05 in the ACT.
To follow on, the national 2005 ABS Recorded crime—victims, a report on crime reported to police across Australian jurisdictions, also shows positive results for the
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