Page 888 - Week 03 - Thursday, 30 March 2006
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That plea is from a 75-year-old woman. I think it behoves the government to try to do something to help us. Back your police force and see if you can decrease the number of incidents around suburban shopping centres.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.34): I thank Mr Pratt for the MPI he has put before us today. I do share many of the concerns raised by the opposition. However, I suspect that my comments will not entirely satisfy either the government or the opposition.
We have had concerns for some time about whether community policing is adequately resourced. I am sure that we have had before us today some very valid examples of the experience of that on the ground. I think that the key issue in any discussion about community policing is trust. That means trust in our police force, and that goes back to trust in our government.
The 2004-05 ACT Policing annual report shows that the community’s trust in the police is falling. Yet, because the figures are still above the national average, the ACT government has had the gall to describe the figures in the police annual report as encouraging. It appears that the ACT government is taking an approach that allows the community to become disgruntled about policing just so long as the disgruntledness stays above the national average. I would not call that an encouraging approach. It is one symptom of an overriding focus on public relations spin accompanying any information regarding policing matters that seems to be becoming entrenched under the current minister for police, who, sadly, is absent today.
The issue of public trust also arises when we consider how the ACT government and ACT Policing report against complaints. When the police minister announced that there were only four substantiated complaints against ACT Policing, he did not mention that there were up to a couple of hundred other complaints against the police which were found to be justified but were semantically defined out of the figures. Whilst most of the other complaints were less serious than the select group of complaints that qualified as being able to be substantiated, some were even more serious and some of them even went off to the courts for resolution.
Of the 246 complaints that were successfully conciliated, the Ombudsman reported that many complaints are effectively resolved with the complainant receiving an explanation of police powers and reasons for priorities or acknowledgment of a minor mistake by a member. When there is an acknowledgment of a mistake by a police officer, any normal, reasonable person would expect the corresponding complaint to be substantiated. No wonder people are losing confidence in the police.
Mr Corbell: I take a point of order, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. Again, I draw your attention to relevance. This is not a debate about broader policing issues; it is about community policing in Canberra shopping centres. Dr Foskey is simply going on about complaints against police and resolution of those complaints. That has nothing to do with the matter at hand, the state of community policing at shopping centre precincts in the ACT. Whilst the government accepts that there are broader issues about police relationships with the community which are relevant to this matter, I think members do need to try to contain themselves to the matter of the state of community policing at
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