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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 7 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 1890 ..

Mr Humphries: What about all these changes we announced the other day?

MR CONNOLLY: That involved you incidentally at the press conference, but that seems to be about the sum total of the involvement. The extraordinary situation with the abolition of the Major Crime Branch, as Mr Osborne said, was that the first Mr Humphries seemed to know about it was when he read it in the paper. The Government line on the abolition of the Major Crime Branch went from "This is purely a police operational decision" to "This is a brilliant Liberal initiative to put more police back on the street, to get police who are sitting behind desks and not doing anything out there doing real police work". That was not the most thoughtful language to describe the work that many senior detectives had been doing. I would have thought it was rather insulting language from a Police Minister.

At first he would have had us believe that it had nothing to do with him; that it was purely a police decision. That seems to be very close to the truth and certainly is borne out by the timing and the way the decision came out. It then became a Liberal initiative which reinforced the Minister's promise to put more police back on the street. Whether taking a very senior and experienced detective sergeant who has been working on major crime for many years and putting him on a radar gun is necessarily the best use of police resources is a question that members may wish to ponder. Such is the state of complete drift in control of internal events.

The abolition of the Fraud Squad and the Drug Squad would not have been debated publicly had it not been for Mr Osborne and the Opposition. Certainly, Mr Humphries did not say earlier this year, "We are looking at abolishing these specialist squads. We want to have a community discussion about this. We want to see what the best model for policing is". It was clear that this was being driven by police management. Of course, police management have a legitimate role in driving these things. However, Mr Humphries's involvement in this whole thing was peripheral.

Mr Humphries: How do you know?

MR CONNOLLY: You were looking more and more puzzled as Mr Osborne and I were revealing more and more details of what was going on in the police organisation, which is supposed to be under your ministerial control. I take members back to the way we, in government, addressed issues of restructuring of the Australian Federal Police. We had to go through a massive restructure in the face of a budget which had been showing remarkable - - -

Mr Humphries: Fancy cutting it back by 9 per cent!

MR CONNOLLY: I would not talk about cutting back police budgets if I were you, Mr Humphries, unless you are going to get up here and say, "I recant. I will come good with my promise and I will restore the funds that I promised to restore. The police have now asked me. Mr Palmer has rung me up and said, `Thanks, Gary. I will have that $1m you offered me but I did not take up last time' ".

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