Page 3834 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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This measure helps in two ways. First of all, it helps people on lower incomes who would really struggle if their car was stolen. And it provides assistance because their vehicles are the ones most likely to be stolen. The $200 immobiliser subsidy will be available to around half of those 5,000 subsidies made available first up. That is a full subsidy—no cash up front whatsoever. It allows pensioners and other Centrelink concession holders to receive that subsidy in full.
The part-subsidy will go to other people in the community who are not on a pension of some form or another but who nevertheless own an older motor vehicle. That will again extend the number of vehicles in the ACT’s private motor vehicle fleet that have immobilisers fitted. That will further drive down car theft in our community. Motor vehicle theft in our community dropped six per cent over the last 12 months. We want to see motorcycle theft drop even further. The immobiliser program is a very effective way to do it. We will be one of the leading jurisdictions in the country when it comes to applying this type of initiative.
Another very important initiative which I am very keen to see the results on—and again I welcome members’ support—is the trial of motorcycle anchor points in public car parks around the ACT. We have seen an increase in the level of motorcycle theft; and when a motorcycle is stolen, it is less likely to be recovered. Motorcycles are simply broken down for parts or they disappear onto a private property somewhere where they do not need to be reregistered. This is a real concern for the government and I know it is a growing concern for Canberra’s motorcycle community.
The provision of anchor points at public car parks will allow private motorcycle owners to chain or bolt their motorcycle to these anchor points. It will assist with preventing theft. We know that it is very easy for two people to come along with a utility, pick up a motorcycle, throw it in the back—and away you go. If there is some ability for the motorcycle to be chained to a particular point, it may assist in reducing that level of opportunistic theft. The government will be trialling the anchor points to see whether they have the effect that we are hoping they will have.
Another very important initiative announced in the appropriation bill is the government’s sexual assault reform program. This is a very significant program, with $4½ million being allocated—a mixture of capital and recurrent expenditure—to deal with support and the infrastructure to support victims of sexual assault in our community. Sexual assault is one of the most insidious types of crime in our community and it is one of the most difficult to prosecute because of the deeply personal, confronting and invasive nature of the crime.
The government is providing funding for closed-circuit television cameras to be put into our courts and is establishing an off-site remote witness facility so that a witness or a victim can give evidence to a court without even having to go into the court building. That minimises the risk of them or their family having to come face to face with their alleged perpetrator or members of the alleged perpetrator’s family or friends. This again helps to reduce the trauma associated with giving evidence in court. So we will have that off-site facility.
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