Page 2579 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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We want to make sure that the police have the powers and the protections to do their job as safely as is possible. It will never be a safe job, but we need to make sure we are doing what we can to assist them. When you look at the number of assaults on police, it is an unacceptable number. At the last election and previously in the last term, we took forward a piece of legislation regarding police assaults where if a police officer was assaulted in the conduct of their duty or another crime was perpetuated against them, it would be an aggravated offence.
That is not going to be a silver bullet. It is not going to resolve all of the issues that police find in our streets, but it was a sensible measure and it mimicked many other measures across other states where they have specific police assault legislation that is absent here in the ACT. People who are actively out in our community dealing with the most dangerous elements of society do need all the protections that we can provide them.
Let me give you a recent example that occurred in June 2014. Police reported that a teenage girl spat on a police officer and punched him or her in the face before kicking another after a fight in the crowd on a Friday Canberra Raiders rugby league game. On 8 March this year police arrested a 25-year-old Queenslander after he alleged assaulted a police officer.
You can see the number of assaults that our police face. The question is this: is this government doing everything it can to provide those protections to the police? Clearly it is not. I think that the most disgraceful example of this was the city beat teams and what was happening there. There are two aspects to this: one is the money that was taken out of the hotels and clubs to fund what was going to be the alcohol crime targeting team, which then was disbanded. The money was taken out that was meant to be provided in support. Let me tell members what was said to the community when the change was made to that structure. I quote Mr House from Clubs ACT:
It’s fair to say we are furious; it’s just an appalling decision. The government just sees the hospitality sector as a source of revenue.
He also said:
The task force has now been abolished in secret. The territory’s pubs and clubs were kept in the dark about the changes to an alcohol crime force that patrolled the city’s licensed venues.
I don’t think it’s good enough when the community and industry clearly have an interest in alcohol related violence and what happens on the streets at night.
What prompted that was that the city beat were not resourced properly and feared for their own safety. There was a safety report and a health and safety notice put in, I believe by a sergeant from that beat. Let me tell you what that notice said:
The staffing numbers of the ACT City Beats Teams have been universally acknowledged by the ACT Operations Committee … as being inadequate to allow effective and safe deployment of personnel to those duties during the hours of darkness at times where the licensed premises of the CBD are in operation and large numbers of people are in and about the Canberra CBD.
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