Page 225 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Police Budget
MR HUMPHRIES: My question is addressed to the Minister for police, Mr Connolly. I refer the Minister to newspaper reports of cuts to the operational areas of ACT policing. Can the Minister confirm that approximately one in three staff employed under the AFP Act in the ACT are classified as staff members - that is, not trained police who are identified as police members under the Act? Given that all of the announced cuts that have been reported in the media so far affect police operations - that is, the work that police members rather than staff members do - can the Minister tell the Assembly what cuts have been effected to support areas and AFP administration in the Government's desire to rein in the budget overrun?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, perhaps I can quote from Mr Dawson's press conference on Friday. He was asked, "Where are the cuts occurring?" and he said, "The areas targeted in the main are support areas". Of course, politicians seeking to capitalise on this are trying to whip up fear in the community, suggesting that these are cuts to the sharp end of policing. There is a telephone campaign going on at the moment. I have had repeated calls to my office from people claiming that when you ring the police at night and say that there is a burglar in the house the police are saying, "Well, that is bad luck. We cannot attend". That is an absolute lie. I hope, Madam Speaker, that the lie is the lie from a person ringing my office but, if police are saying that to people who ring, that is a very serious matter which will be dealt with very seriously. Of course, all calls to the police emergency line are taped, and we are having inquiries made to see whether police are in fact so misinforming the public. It would be a very serious matter if police were taking this political campaign to the point of putting out such misleading information.
Madam Speaker, as I explained in answer to Mr Kaine's question, we are looking at reining in expenditure so as to bring the police budget in on budget. Most of the changes are in support, non-operational, non-front-line areas. We are looking at reducing penalties and overtime where possible. We are abandoning some services. The property office was open for extended hours. That was perhaps convenient to the public but hardly front-line operational policing. We are cutting back on some of the public relations activities. There were some hysterical press releases from Mr Humphries saying that Kenny Koala was about to die, or words to a similar effect. We could have faced an overexpenditure, so for the remainder of this budgetary period we are cutting back on some of those purely public relations, non-sharp-end policing functions; but, as the police commissioner repeatedly reminds the community and assures the community, community safety is not being prejudiced.
Mr Humphries asked whether a third of the staff are support staff. That is correct. It is about the same as the ratio of other police forces. Support staff versus uniform staff is about the same as in other forces. It is sensible to have a component of the police numbers in that support role. They are less fully trained than an operational police officer, and it makes sense to free up the operational police officer for sharp end policing and have some of the paperwork and back-up done by a non-uniformed, non-fully-trained police officer. That is a sensible process of administration, and I can assure Mr Humphries that savings are being looked at in that area. As Mr Dawson said, most of the areas where savings are being achieved are support areas but, of course, politicians seeking to use this as a Federal election issue, as your former colleague in this place is doing, would have us believe otherwise.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .