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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 699 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

provision of community facility space in the inner north. There is a process in place to assess the overall adequacy of community facility provision across the city, and I will undertake to provide Ms Dundas with details of that process.

MS DUNDAS: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Minister, will the government commit itself to addressing the ad hoc provision of community sector accommodation and to providing a well-resourced and centrally managed body to administer community sector accommodation owned by the ACT government?

MR CORBELL: The integration of the delivery of community facilities is a significant issue. The previous government's relatively ad hoc structure for dealing with the range of community facilities and their management structures certainly warrants review. I am currently paying close attention to the matter and looking at the options for improvement. From a Department of Education and Community Services perspective, I imagine this will require a whole-of-government look at how community facilities are managed. That is a matter currently under consideration.

Police

MRS DUNNE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Deputy Chief Minister in his capacity as minister for police. Minister, on 12 December last year, you stated in this place:

Minister, do you stand by that promise?

MR QUINLAN: Yes, I do. We have set an incremental scale over the next three years, and that is the intention. Let me qualify that by saying that, since coming into the ministry and checking those things, I have found that there have been delays in training police and keeping the force up to the contracted number.

In recent times there have been a couple of deliberate actions taken to ensure that we can actually get up to the base number before we start the incremental process. Part of that has been recruitment at a local level. There has possibly been less of a push for members of the force to move into the wider AFP, so I hope we might be able to retain some numbers. You cannot hold people back when opportunities occur, and there has been a drain within the ACT.

MRS DUNNE: I have a supplementary question. Minister, why does this promise for 30 stand at variance to your party's election manifesto, which states, "Labor will progressively increase police numbers by 20 over three years"?

MR QUINLAN: That manifesto must be out of date.

Mrs Dunne: That is Gerritsen. That is in Hansard.

MR QUINLAN: I will have to look at the Gerritsen report again, and I will reconcile it or admit that it is in error.

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