Page 1801 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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paragraph 2(a) he takes that 52 per cent figure and refers “especially to higher crime areas such as Tuggeranong and Woden”. When you go to the Canberra Times article, I do not think one can necessarily extrapolate that these are higher crime areas. What it actually notes is that the Woden police area—it says this in the second paragraph of the article—includes the inner south and Weston.
That actually triggered me to look a little deeper, as it is always good to do. I actually went to the AFP website to look at what the Woden patrol zone includes. It is all of the suburbs of Weston Creek, all of the suburbs of the Woden Valley and all of the suburbs that most people would traditionally call the inner south—Yarralumla, Deakin, Forrest, Red Hill and the like. What we actually get when we break this down is that the Woden police area and the Tuggeranong police area are everything south of the lake. Most people consider that to be 50 per cent of Canberra, give or take.
So we are looking at 52 per cent of Canberra’s crime being committed in 50 per cent of Canberra. You cannot call that “higher crime areas”. Maybe it is not exactly 50 per cent, but you get the general idea that it is important not to create fear or to use numbers in ways that may excite the community and give them a sense that they are somehow unsafe when, in fact, the statistics do not necessarily make that point.
The second is that crime statistics can only ever be a snapshot in time. The article reported crime statistics from March. Again, if you go to the police website, the information on that website has now been updated with data for April. I have not done a complete comparison for the purposes of this debate. However, taking the number of assaults as one example is illustrative of the danger of raising fear based on crime statistics.
There were 90 assaults in March in the Woden and Tuggeranong areas combined. Bear in mind that that is everything south of the lake. These made up part of the 52 per cent figure that the Canberra Times reported and that is included in the motion’s text. There were 61 assaults for the same area in April. That is a significant drop of 30 per cent on the previous month.
I make that point simply to underline the fact that the statistics can be quite variable, particularly on relatively low numbers. So while we recognise that paragraph 1(c) is based on verifiable statistics and is, therefore, an accurate statement for a point in time, we are cautious by saying that we should think about the way we use those statistics when we debate them.
I would like to now turn to Ms Burch’s amendment on behalf of the government. We will be supporting the government’s deletion of paragraph 1(d). We do not agree with the statement that there is a lack of substantial ongoing support for Neighbourhood Watch. As Ms Burch has indicated, the government has provided $20,000 of funding for Neighbourhood Watch. My understanding is that this is the first time that Neighbourhood Watch has had an ongoing commitment from government. There has been one-off funding in the past, but this is actually a commitment that continues over a number of budgets.
There is an important discussion to be had about whether this is enough money, and that is why we will not be supporting paragraph 1(d). I understand Mr Doszpot will
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