Page 3076 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
needed better resourcing this year and that Lennox saw it very much as a two-stage process. I said at the time that if the number of call centre staff was going to be increased and the centre better resourced, it followed that front-line staff must be resourced well enough to attend the calls they are directed to by the call centre.
Front-line staff were better resourced in this year’s budget, and I welcome that commitment from the government for $21 million to pay for 30 new ambulance officers and five new ambulances. This is a good demonstration of how governments can best respond to issues. The government have taken the time to engage an expert to conduct an independent review. They have listened and responded to the recommendations over subsequent budgets. The review was not forgotten about after the first budget, and resources were delivered as recommended. I welcome the way the government has worked through this issue of ambulance numbers and funding.
Let me turn now to late night police. The last 12 months has also seen promising work done by the late night police that were funded in the budget last year. This time last year I discussed the importance of the police taking an educative and preventative approach to their work. There are sometimes concerns that when police numbers are increased there will be an increase in arrests. This can occur in places where the police do not have an impact on the levels of crime but, instead, there are simply more police out on the beat and more arrests occur. Thankfully, this has not been the case with the ACT’s late night police.
During estimates the Attorney cited—and he has on a number of other occasions—a 26 per cent decrease in alcohol-related offences over a four-month period. That certainly is a welcome figure. However, I think everyone readily acknowledges that it is only an early indication and the results cannot be said to be definitive. That said, hopefully it is indicative of a trend that will continue. Certainly the licensees who I have spoken to have welcomed the new late night police. The licensees recognise that a safer nightlife is better for business and better for the late night economy overall.
However, the liquor reforms are not without problems. The fees are too blunt and need to be revised in the next six months. The Greens have lodged with government a better fee structure that more accurately reflects risk. As the fees currently stand, an 80-person pub is treated the same as an 800-person nightclub and assumed to pose the same level of risk.
As for the off licences, there is more that can be done to make the fees fairer and more accurate. For example, a bottle shop that deals in $500,000 of alcohol per year is 20 times smaller than a supermarket that deals in $11 million of alcohol a year. However, the fee paid by the supermarket is only 2½ half times larger. It is quite clear from those figures that they need to be recalibrated.
Another issue discussed last year was the backlog in our courts. As members will no doubt recall, last year’s budget contained funding to create a virtual district court. That proposal was not ultimately successful, I guess because both we and the Canberra Liberals were not convinced that it would be an effective way of addressing court backlogs. Instead, the Assembly has since passed a number of other reforms designed to gain the most efficiency out of our existing court resources.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video