Page 1497 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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know that if you go interstate, especially into New South Wales, you will see many more police in places like Queanbeyan, Goulburn and the far South Coast. You will see stacks of police on the Canberra to Cooma highway. I suppose that is to be expected but even in Sydney itself you will see quite a lot of police. In Canberra you will not see as many police cars on the road as you would have seen 10 and certainly 20 years ago. There are very good reasons for that.
We know that the numbers have hardly moved in the last 25 years. I saw some figures recently which showed that we now have, I think, about 25 more sworn police officers in the ACT than we did in 1980, which is more than 25 years ago. That is about a four per cent or five per cent increase in police although, as the minister said, the population has gone up from about 170,000 to 323,000. Quite clearly, policing numbers have not remotely kept track with the increased number of people in the territory.
Crimes are getting more sophisticated. When you get to about 250,000 people in your city you tend to get much more serious crimes than you used to. In 1980 you would have been lucky to have had two or three armed robberies a year in Canberra. Now it is a miracle if you only get two or three armed robberies a week. The complexity of crime and the instance of more serious crime really means that this government has to pay a lot more attention to its police force.
Dr Foskey, in her, on the whole, very sensible speech, talked about accountability measures. I suppose they are all very well but, again, it gets back to resourcing. The police are having great difficulty finding the time to gather sufficient evidence and prepare briefs for court. The police are absolutely flat out going from job to job and then doing all their paperwork. Is it little wonder that some of the briefs of evidence are a little bit short? Then, of course, they are criticised by the courts for not having sufficient evidence. Whilst that is probably accurate, it is unfair criticism. You cannot be at three or four places at once and you cannot do three or four things at the same time in terms of being out on a job and perhaps preparing evidence. This problem is indicative of a lack of proper resourcing for our police force. We are seeing some other significant problems which are not going to go away. Even if the budget were to make provision for another 120 to 130 sworn police officers, it would still take some time for a number of things to go through the system.
One of the other big problems in ACT Policing which has not been addressed effectively by this government is the fact that a lot of experienced police are now reaching the magic age of 55 and retiring. Many of the officers that I used to have the honour and pleasure of dealing with when I was a prosecutor in the 80s—the old hard heads, the old experienced police who would know how to handle a difficult situation because of their years of experience—are leaving. You have a lot of very keen, very capable, very intelligent and very hardworking younger officers taking their place, but often they do not have that level of experience. And experience is important.
I think something like nine squads are used in Belconnen. These squads are lucky to have one or maybe two very experienced old sergeants, and that makes a huge difference. But, as I said, there are now a lot of other squads in the ACT where the average experience is only about three years, and that has to tell no matter how dedicated, courageous and efficient the officers are. These well-trained and wonderful officers who, in many instances, are very young men and women, do a fantastic job
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