Page 7 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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becoming more effective in getting these things reported, and the same essentially goes for sexual assault. We are not getting more crimes committed; through effective campaigns of this Government, through this Government's commitment to women's rights in particular, we are getting more sexual assaults reported, and that is a good thing.
This nonsense that Mr Humphries is sprouting, trying to jump onto the Police Association's and Mr Stefaniak's band wagon, is completely at odds with the repeated statements of the Liberal Party leader. The Liberal Party leader has repeatedly said that the police budget should be treated in no different way from other budgets, and he seems to agree to it again. We as an ACT government are having to deal with declining resources. The police force had had a 2 per cent cut in funding last year and it will have the same again this year. We still fund policing in this community at a far more generous level than does any State in Australia.
Mr Humphries: We need to, with these crime rates.
MR CONNOLLY: That is just nonsense, Mr Humphries. Crime across Australia steadily increases. This hysteria from the Liberal Party, this attempt to create fear and mayhem in the community, is irresponsible, cheap partisan politics. Mr Kaine at least has the decency as a responsible politician to say repeatedly that the Liberal Party would, in effect, do exactly the same as we are doing with the police budget, that is, make the police absorb the same cuts as everyone else. For his minions to run around in the community, as Mr Humphries is doing now and as Mrs Carnell did last week, whipping up hysteria and shock-horror about the police budget is undercutting the statements of their own leader, who said that he would do exactly the same as we have done.
Planning Appeals
MR MOORE: My question is addressed to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning and refers to an article in the Canberra Times this morning by Crispin Hull, which included this statement by Mr Phillips, chairman of ACTEW:
The public record will show that we have been through all the approvals and planning processes meticulously.
The article went on to say that people were trying to stop the development and had tried various methods, including objection through the planning process, which was their democratic right, but that the Planning Committee of the Assembly had approved the plan. Is it not true that the public appeal mechanisms were in this case cut short under section 7(3)(c)(ii) of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act, which provides for your department to narrow the ability of people to object, and also that the Planning Committee, in reporting to the Assembly, failed to recognise this in that they suggested that they had approved the variation to the plan rather than the design and siting? In summary, was the appeals mechanism cut short under section 7(3)(c)(ii) of the Act, preventing anybody other than the developer raising objections? Secondly, are you preparing any amendments to the Act to provide for a fairer appeals mechanism for citizens of the ACT?
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