Page 895 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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ATTORNEY-GENERAL
Motion of Censure
MR HUMPHRIES (3.20): Madam Speaker, I seek leave to move a motion of censure of the Minister for police.
Leave granted.
MR HUMPHRIES: I thank members, and I thank you, Madam Speaker. I move:
That this house censure the Minister for police for misleading it as to the incidence of crime.
I table a copy of that motion. Madam Speaker, I want to make clear at the outset what it is that I am not doing by moving this motion. I am not suggesting that the Minister set out deliberately to mislead the Assembly as to the situation with respect to crime in the ACT. I am not suggesting that he quoted figures which were of themselves inaccurate as to the matters contained in those figures. They were not inherently false or misleading as figures put forward by the Minister on behalf of the Government. I have no reason to believe that the figures he produced at the Assembly's meeting last week concerning the six-monthly comparisons between the first six months of last financial year and the first six months of this financial year are themselves not true. As we have heard, the Assembly is not to be provided with the full briefing document which justifies those figures, but I think we can take it as read that those figures are not disputed.
It is the contention of the Opposition that the reference to a 12 per cent decline over the two periods concerned was intended to suggest that car theft in the ACT was and is on the decline. An impression was created which is misleading in that respect because, in fact, the indications are not that there is any significant decline at all in car theft. Indeed, a distorted impression of what is going on in the ACT was created by that quoting of figures. It is also the contention of the Opposition that the Minister misled the Assembly with respect to the question of burglary rates by suggesting that an increase in burglary rates across the country matched and mirrored an increase in such crimes in the ACT. In fact, Madam Speaker, I want to indicate to the Assembly that that simply is not the case. Those are the two principal matters we bring before the Assembly.
Both statements were designed to show that the fight against crime being conducted by this Government was a fight that was somehow succeeding. The Minister was trying to throw a good light on those efforts by the Government, a better light than could reasonably be thrown by the facts. In many respects, Madam Speaker, it is true to say that basically the only good news to arise out of that brief to which the Minister referred earlier today was that information which he quoted, and that the overall picture of crime in the ACT painted by that brief and by all the other facts and figures which have come before the Assembly from time to time is very different. I believe, Madam Speaker, that to quote those figures in a sense out of context, in a way which misled us as to what was happening generally in the ACT, is reprehensible and is grounds for a motion of censure.
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