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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 622 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

belong." We freed them from jobs that trained police officers should not have been doing. The community wants them on the street. They ought to be on the street preventing crime or, if they have to, solving crime. We freed something like 50 officers from communications rooms and from desks to make sure they were out there helping build relationships with the community by their visible presence but at the same time solving crime if they had to.

The police said they needed certain equipment, and as we came into surplus we were able to provide them with that equipment a number of times. That equipment is proving to be very effective in the prevention and the solving of crime. I urge the current government to take up the use of DNA testing. DNA testing has the potential to solve large numbers of crimes perpetrated by the one offender. It can also free people who have been wrongly convicted. We should use this modern technology to make sure justice is done.

Another way of fighting crime is through effective law. The police told me continually, even before I became police minister, that they were sick of arresting the same bod time and time again because when they took him to court he was asked if he wanted bail and when he was granted bail he went straight back to his crime. He had to be caught several times. It was not just a matter of the police taking him to court and locking him up. Now, when you are repeatedly caught for the same offence or for a serious offence, bail can be withdrawn. That is a reasonable thing. The administration of the Bail Act so far shows that it has been effective. The motion uses the phrase "in part", because the Bail Act is one of the tools the previous government put in place and used to reduce crime.

The second thing we did to make effective law was to amend the Crimes Act so that police need only reasonably suspect rather than reasonably believe. These provisions are in line with provisions in New South Wales that have helped the police there counter burglaries, and I believe they will help here.

We have to keep a watchful eye on legislation. If anyone knows of examples of these powers being abused or these powers not being used appropriately, I would like to know about them, because I helped pass that law and I want that law used effectively. Apart from ideology, nothing has been put to us that would indicate that these laws are ineffective or are being abused. I want that information.

We also worked with the police to make sure that there were effective tactics and that the tactics changed. Intelligence-led policing through Operation Anchorage was very effective. But when we had an effect in one area, we then moved on to the next area. When we reduced the number of burglaries by catching the burglars and keeping them locked up, we then went after the fences. We were constantly shifting the focus of what we were doing, and the police deserve immense credit.

Mr Stanhope likes to quote old figures and run his rhetoric about Canberra being the burglary capital. We are the only jurisdiction, to my knowledge, that has crime rates going down. I want to quote figures for the financial year 2000-01, and I hope that when we get the 12-month figures for 2001-02 they are as good. There were some increases in crime in 2000-01. Assaults went up 10 per cent, armed robberies 4 per cent, shoplifting 5 per cent and arson 20 per cent. But murder went down 100 per cent, serious assault 14.3 per cent, serious sexual assault 30 per cent, armed robbery 12 per cent, burglary of

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