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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3948 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Let me repeat that in case you missed it. Had your election commitments at the last election been implemented because you were returned to government, there would be fewer police in the ACT police force today. So this is just one of those "we're now in opposition, we don't have to pay the bills"proposals.

I notice Mr Pratt stated, in public, you are going to pay for the additional police by industry development, including the film and television industry. I would like to see that financial plan. We are, at this stage, of course, keeping a little tally on commitments such as those which have been made already.

There is a certain amount of intellectual fraudulence in coming in here today and saying there are not enough police when you went to the last election promising fewer than we have today. But let's take it further. Ms Dundas, whose office quite clearly did a lot more homework than your office, Mr Pratt, came here with a little bit more information and effectively demolished what you put in front of us. What you have done is put selectively a few figures in front of this place that prove absolutely nothing.

You started with the old standard statements: "Informed members of the public say to me,""Members of the police force say to me."What does that mean? What is that code for? That is code for: "I don't have any hard data. I will selectively use the statistics that are available."While I will concede that statistics have been erratic over the last four years, Mr Pratt, there is an intellectual fraudulence in that. I just happen to have in front of me the ABS statistics of victims of crime for the ACT from 1993 to 2002, and it is not a picture of crime increasing rampantly in the ACT. That is not the case.

I know it is one of those "yes, we might be able to make something out of this one because it has some resonance out in the community; we might be able to pick some political points out of this"situations, but at least come to this place with some form of rigour in the research that you have done to support the assertions that you make. Do this place the credit-or, put in another way, don't insult the intelligence of this place.

I do congratulate Ms Dundas, now she has returned to the chamber, on the work that she or her office has done, in fact, in demolishing some of the things that you said, Mr Pratt, and pointing up the intellectual weakness of the case that you have made.

The motion calls on the Assembly to note the increase in community complaints. Where is the hard data for that? You made that up. You come into this place and make it up. This is supposed to be the parliament of the ACT. Get some hard facts, for God's sake.

You also talked about response times. We do have a policing agreement in the ACT and there are a range of response times that are targeted. Certainly we would all like to see them much better; we would like to see immediate response to life-threatening situations where people feel in danger. But let me assure you that, on the audited statistics that we have available to us-and I don't guarantee 100 per cent that they're the best figures, the best hard data that we have-generally, the targets in response times have been met or exceeded.

Let me give the figures. For priority one, response within eight minutes: target, 60 per cent; results for 2002-03, 69 per cent. Within 12 minutes, 90 per cent is the target; result,

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