Page 468 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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at the Canberra show; they would like to know why it is that the shadow minister for police continues to bash them and insist that they cannot leave, refuse to leave and wilfully refuse to meet their obligations under the triple-0 calls. It is fundamentally important that this information be provided by 5 o’clock today so that it can be referred immediately to the police so that it can be appropriately dealt with.
Similarly here today, they continue the theme. We saw it yesterday: outrageous suggestions of police inaction in relation to a triple-0 call—false, wrong, not right, designed to engender fear within the community, designed to make people feel unsafe, designed to create insecurity.
As Mr Hargreaves said today, Mr Pratt has been doing this for the last three months in relation to bushfire preparations: create the anxiety; make people nervous; create an environment in which people do not sleep at night for fear their house is going to burn down; letterbox houses saying, “You must be afraid, mustn’t you, that you are not safe at night.” He has been doing it in relation to bushfires. Now he is doing it in relation to crime: generate the fear; create the anxiety; go around predicting events that have not occurred—nevertheless does it matter?—create the fear; create the anxiety; besmirch the Emergency Services Authority, our rural fire service and our urban fire service; bash the police; allege that they do not turn up or respond to triple-0 calls; and similarly at the show.
We saw it again today. The theme develops: yesterday, Campbell and the Canberra show; today, we have moved on to Erindale. “The police failed in Campbell”, “the police failed at the show”, “the police failed at Erindale”. Where are you moving tomorrow? What is your focus tomorrow in relation to police failure—the fact that the police cannot do their job, that the police are no good, that the police do not respond, that the police do not care?
This police-bashing has gone on for long enough. “Put up or shut up” is the message. Put up by 5 o’clock this afternoon. Give the police the information you have; let them do their job. Show, us, Mr Stefaniak, the evidence on which you made your claims yesterday of rampaging gangs, assaulting willy-nilly innocent bystanders at the Canberra show. Give us the information. Let the police do their job. Do not stand back and criticise. If you have got in your possession information that would allow them to pursue the allegations you make, name the names; identify the witnesses; be prepared to go and stand in the box yourself and repeat the claims you made yesterday.
The same goes for Mr Pratt: rather than be out there bashing the police continually, as he does, and claiming outrageously, as he did yesterday, that the police refused wilfully to respond to triple-0 calls, give us the basis of those claims so that we can assure in future that those scurrilous remarks that you have made over the last couple of days about the police inaction will not be repeated. So that you know and understand the error of your own ways and stop coming into this place and laying on the table as fact claims and assertions which are absolutely flawed, wrong and malicious in the extreme, it is vitally important, in order that you assist the police to do their duty, that you provide that information today so that it can be passed immediately to police.
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