Page 1306 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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misapprehension, not on mere speculation or a lack of understanding of the problems of the city; it is based on reality. The fact is that crime in this community is rising and street crime is right in there rising with it. One need only point to statistics to prove just how dangerous the situation has become in some sections of this place.
Mr Speaker, the figures I have here relate to increases in certain categories of crime between the years 1985-86 and the years 1987-88 - I do not believe figures are available for the 1988-89 year as yet. They point up quite graphically, in some categories, the increases in crime that have occurred. This is particularly interesting set against categories of other sorts of crime, which in some cases have actually declined. Particular sorts of crime have increased. I am referring particularly to break and enter. Those offences have risen from 1,483 three years ago to 1,943 last year. That is an increase, over two years, of 31 per cent.
Motor vehicle thefts in this community have increased. I am talking here about Canberra, not about other places in Australia. Motor vehicle thefts have increased from 1,000 three years ago to 1,411 last year. That is particularly graphic when you consider that in the previous year, 1984-85, there were only 812 thefts. It has almost doubled in that period of four years.
Offences against public order have increased from 224 three years ago to 306 last year, an increase of 36.6 per cent. Malicious damage offences have risen from 2,276 to 2,707, an increase of 18 per cent. I am concerned about that, and I am concerned not just because it is reflected in increased insurance premiums and in increased costs picked up by this community to correct vandalism and to provide additional services to people who need to recover from losses caused by vandalism and things of that kind, but also because it results in an added sense of insecurity in the ordinary citizens of Canberra.
I am sure the Chief Minister and others in the Government have read newspaper reports in recent times about people who have been subjected to various kinds of attack in this community. I do not believe that those sorts of problems are uncontrollable; I do not believe that they can be excused as merely the symptoms of social problems, and therefore to be pardoned in some fashion. They are not to be pardoned; they are not to be tolerated; they are to be addressed; they are to be tackled in a responsible way. What more responsible way do we have at our disposal than to give police the power to take preventive measures? We are not talking here in principle about police officers dealing in a heavy-handed fashion with people and dragging them before the courts.
It is my hope that this Bill will not be used terribly extensively as a police power to bring people before the
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