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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2396 ..
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER
: The member's time has expired. Would you like to take your second 10 minutes?MR PRATT
: Thank you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. I welcome the funding that has been allocated to trial a community firefighting capability. I think that is a very good move. Whatever shape this community firefighting capability eventually takes, it will be fundamentally important to preparing this community to better fight fire threats in the future. But we would want to see that trial finished before summer. I urge the government to move forward on this trial and mobilise the trial's recommendations so that new capabilities are well in place.Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I welcome the government's selection of Mr McLeod and, of course, the establishing of the McLeod inquiry. This inquiry has an important role to play in finding all the lessons that need to be learnt. It is a pity, though, that that inquiry is not independent. It is a great pity that there will not be public hearings, unless, of course, Chief Minister, you get written responses from Mr McLeod indicating that he may, in fact, go on and do that. It would be good if that could be done.
The government must manage the outcome of the McLeod inquiry wisely and expeditiously. The community cannot wait months, with the government sitting on the McLeod report. The lessons need to be urgently applied so that the community and its emergency services can be best prepared for next summer.
Mr Speaker, I would now like to address police matters. Clearly, the ACT has one of the best police forces in the world. The ACT police force is certainly one of the best led, best organised and best structured police forces in this country. That is a credit to the police and I congratulate the minister for keeping things moving in that direction. Clearly, the ACT police force is also well backed up by a very good federal police force, the AFP.
Mr Speaker, the realities are that there have certainly been successes in reducing crime rates-and I will get back to that later-but, of course, some other crime rates continue to climb. It is a bit of a furphy that crime can be brought down to such a level that we can rest on our laurels. That will never be the case.
Criminals are certainly becoming much more audacious. Attacks on the vulnerable are becoming much more vicious, and the statistics are proving this. Of course, there is another issue that we have to face up to-this has to be raised and we have to talk about it-and that is the war against terror. This is part of the landscape in which this community sits.
Mr Speaker, the government and the police are to be congratulated for some of the changing crime rates. Total personal rates have certainly fallen in the reporting period to, I think, July 2002 from 7.7 in 1998 to 5.9. But in terms of personal crime rates, the ACT still remains the second highest in the nation.
It is important to note that the assault victimisation rate is still one of the highest in the country. Car theft rates are dropping but they are still above the national average. So
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