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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 676 ..

MR PRATT (4.30): Mr Speaker, I rise today to support Ms Dundas’s motion on interaction between the police and the mentally ill. This motion is clearly about routine escort tasks and is not meant to address more complicated confrontational issues. Mr Speaker, I believe that this is a very important issue that has significant consequences for both the mental and the social wellbeing of the community. The important part of Ms Dundas’s motion is the requirement that plain-clothes police and unmarked police cars be used wherever possible. She is not asking for the impossible. That is why I think that this motion is eminently supportable.

Mr Speaker, the Liberal opposition has identified that there are occasions when there is not time to call in an unmarked police car with plain-clothes police officers to respond to a CAT request. However, lack of time is the only reasonable excuse in that case; lack of resources is not a reasonable excuse. When an urgent request comes from CAT to the police to pick up someone, the closest car may be the only option to take to attend. That is understandable. But there are many other cases where there are delays of days or even weeks between a CAT request and when the police pick up a person if the situation is not urgent; so there is time for the task to be sensitively planned.

That is an example of when an unmarked police car and plain-clothes police can attend to escort the people away; there is time to plan for that and put that in place. That is not unachievable; it only takes planning. I think Ms Dundas has made a valid point. We feel that the service overall can be improved upon, which is the aim of the motion. That is why it is one that needs to be supported.

I go on to say that when people’s homes are attended by police, not only does it attract attention but also it attracts suspicion. When someone is escorted from their home by uniformed police officers and taken away in a marked police car, a stigma is automatically associated with the person by the person’s neighbours and the community in general. That is unnecessary, unfair and unwarranted on occasions where those persons are only being escorted from their home for assessment by a psychiatrist.

One would have to wonder what would be said if we were put in that position. I know how I would feel and I am sure that the minister would feel the same way. That applies particularly to the many people who, in other circumstances, are leading quite a normal life and the stigma that can then be attached if they are seen to be escorted away by uniformed police in a marked police car. It can be severely embarrassing for them and quite compromising. There are also some mental illnesses that cause people to react negatively and violently towards people in uniform. It is for precisely these reasons that plain-clothes police officers and unmarked police cars would be safer and more sensible to use, so long as operational priorities allow.

If I could just turn to a couple of comments made by Mr Wood. He raised the point that police cannot always be easily available. I think that is acknowledged by all the participants in this debate. I do not think anybody is calling for a civilian-clothed patrol to be perpetually on standby for CAT tasks. Where time permits and operational restrictions allow, we believe that greater effort can be made to provide unmarked cars for routine CAT tasks.

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