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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3946 ..

MR CORNWELL (continuing):

Motorists have once again become the target of juveniles who have been seen throwing rocks at passing cars on some of Tuggeranong's arterial roads.

A gentleman complained that this happened at the underpass between Taverner Street and Erindale Drive. He discovered that one of them was the same person who had been throwing rocks at him somewhere else. No doubt, Mr Hargreaves, the motorist who suffered that would have welcomed a few police attack dogs in that area.

Might I also suggest that the 27-year-old lady who was attacked at Lyons shops last Sunday at noon and had her handbag stolen and is still traumatised might have appreciated the same thing.

Then there are the break-ins that we hear about so frequently; the concern, as Ms Tucker quite rightly identified, of the aged people in this community, many of whom are scared stiff to go out at night, absolutely terrified to go out at night.

The view in the community is that the courts are soft on penalties which, incidentally, Mr Speaker, does nothing for police morale, I would suggest to you. What is the point of trying to track somebody down, picking up this low life, and then finding that they are let off by a far too-indulgent justice system? We have the law in this city. I sometimes wonder if we have justice.

We are accused of being tough on crime. I make no apologies for that. We are. We are concerned about the growing unease in the community, particularly in my case in relation to the aged. Yet I hear the attitudes of the government, the attitudes of the crossbench, on this. Ms Dundas talks about it not being just about locking people up; what we have got to look at is the causes of crime. I trust Ms Dundas is not suggesting that we don't lock anybody up, that we just address the causes of crime, otherwise I suppose we will have serial killers running around being counselled.

I appreciate that there are some people in this Assembly who would like to turn Canberra into nannyville on the Molonglo, but the truth remains that we have some very serious offenders in this city who need to be dealt with and this government is not providing the resources that we need to control these people. Those resources are the police force.

It is simply not good enough to accuse us of being tough on crime because then we get into a name-calling exercise. We would be accusing the government, and quite rightly, of being soft on crime. I believe that there is good evidence to support that, but for the life of me I fail to see why, unless Labor imagines that all these offenders are somehow going to vote for them at the next election and they want to ensure that their voting base is kept safe. I don't think for a moment, Mr Speaker, that that would be the reason.

Mr Quinlan: What did you say it for?

MR CORNWELL: I said it because you can refute it if you wish, Mr Treasurer. The point I am making is this: there has to be some reason for this strange attitude that you people and some of the crossbenchers are taking towards this whole issue. I find time

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