Page 442 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 1990
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fete. That is obviously "public behaviour" and we had that in mind.
The crime rate, of course, varies. We note the recent report from the Institute of Criminology which charts the waves of crime. The position can also change according to the data that is collected and on what it is based. Anybody in Canberra needs to move around with some discretion. I do not suggest that you would want to go down behind the Griffin Centre at 3.00 am on your own if you are not a very large person. Perhaps if you were in Brierly Street at Weston at 4.00 am on a Sunday morning you ought not to be surprised at what sometimes happens.
Given those qualifications and within the terms of reference that we considered, Canberra is a safe city. Perhaps I should say, to be careful, it is a relatively safe city. It is a good city to be in. We should be out there and we should be enjoying it. One of the points that the committee makes is that a busy city is a safe city. We do not want to clear our streets. We have to use them fully at all times.
Looking at our terms of reference, there are really few problems of public disorder. All on the committee, all in this house, would agree that a few problems are still too many and we have to work to reduce them. We looked at those areas identified in the terms of reference and they were predominantly shopping centres, the bus interchanges and places of major public enjoyment and entertainment such as the Food and Wine Festival. The overwhelming weight of evidence that we received and the submissions that we listened to showed that there are no real problems in those areas.
I want to make two points. First of all, we heard evidence, and I believe it is substantially correct, that in some quarters there is a perception of a problem; people feel that there is a greater problem than really exists. Sometimes this is because a newspaper in the south part of the city puts out great headlines about one incident that can be interpreted to mean that there is a whole range of disorder in that area. So, sometimes there is a perception of a problem.
A second point I particularly want to make concerns the activities of young people, because there is also a perception that where there is public disorder young people are concerned. In fact, a great volume of evidence to the committee denied that this was the case. I believe that young people are not particularly responsible for any public disorder and they should not be held accountable for any view of public disorder. Again, that is not to say that some young people do not make real nuisances of themselves from time to time. I want to quote from the submission of the ACT Workers with Youth Network. I think this covers that point extremely well. The submission said:
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