Page 454 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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Mrs Dunne: When you do fund it, will you take down the sign?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Interjections, humorous or not, are out of order.
MR QUINLAN: It helps a little if there is just a touch of humour amongst the acid that flows from Mrs Dunne. Of course, other major projects have been mooted and they all seem to me to be sensible projects. But, again, you will see responsible budgeting in the process of not actually funding them until the capacity is there. That is way to have sensible government and that is the way it will continue. Was that the searching question heralded on the ABC?
Mr Mulcahy: No, it isn’t.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Quinlan! I know you want to keep going but I call Mr Pratt.
Policing—Erindale centre
MR PRATT: My question is to the minister for police. On WIN news of last Friday, 3 March, regarding the spate of robberies and other crime at the Erindale shops, you were quoted as saying, “I’m satisfied that the police response was adequate.” Minister, whilst you may be satisfied with the police response, the proprietors of many of the businesses in the Erindale centre are not. Why is it necessary for the proprietors of small businesses in the Erindale centre to consider “hiring security staff to do the job that police should be doing in the community?” Why are you starving the ACT police of sufficient resources to permit them to perform their community responsibilities?
MR HARGREAVES: I need the chamber to know that I have been using the Erindale shopping centre as my local shopping centre since 1982. It is within my electorate. It is not anywhere near the suburb of Isaacs. That is where you live, don’t you, Mr Pratt? You do not even live in your own electorate and you would not know it, but you do know the difference between community safety and clay—
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Hargreaves, come to the point of the question.
MR HARGREAVES: I am trying to, Mr Speaker, but I am having some difficulty. Mr Pratt may know the difference between community safety and clay, but I could not be absolutely sure of that. Firstly, I have to say that I go to the Erindale shopping centre at least once a week and nobody has ever approached me in an official or private capacity about it. Secondly, it is not unusual in this town or any other for owners of shopping centres, particularly those owned by Macquarie Bank, whose principals also do not live in my electorate, to hire private security guards to assist in the safety of their tenants.
I do not carry round in my head the details of every police response and every police report and I have to say that I always treat whatever Mr Pratt brings into this house with some suspicion, because he rarely gets it right. Sometimes, he would not know the difference between truth and clay. I would like if I may, by way of background—
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