Page 1502 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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The population of Canberra is 330,000. You would lose it two or three times in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, an area probably a 10th or a 20th of the size of Canberra. Ashfield to Roseville is about 18 kilometres. Hornsby to Cronulla is probably about 40 kilometres.
From the top of Gungahlin to the bottom of Banks is about 45 kilometres. If you have only got two or three units on at night and there is a serious incident in Belconnen and your nearest available unit is at the bottom of Tuggeranong, you are going to have to use some sirens. You are talking about a 15 or 20-minute trip. That is something that is not revealed from what the minister had to say.
Canberra, as a terrorist target, makes us have different needs. The growth in what the police do in community welfare has been enormous in the last 10 years. There is no consideration given to that by the minister. After hours, they are the CAT team; they are the crisis team for mental health. If you ring the CAT team and they are busy or there are no officers available or they are all out on call, call the cops.
When I was police minister we put in place mental health awareness training for police officers. Why? Because more and more, because of the failings of the former health minister in health, you cannot get a crisis team member to come to your residence if there is a crisis. The comment often made is: “Call the police.”
After hours, if you are lucky enough to get a CAT team member who will attend, they will often not go until a police officer is available to attend with them. There is no credit given by the minister to the way that the job has changed and the complexity of that job.
Nobody is asking for the Northern Territory numbers of more than 600 per 100,000. We all understand the scale of the problems that the Northern Territory has. We are asking, though, to give our officers the ability to do their jobs properly, to take their leave when they are owed it so that they are refreshed and revitalised when they come back on the job after each shift, for an increase. As Commissioner Keelty said, 100 would be a reasonable figure to aim for.
We are picked on by the minister; we are ridiculed for going for the national average. You will remember this, Mr Speaker: about two Fridays before the 2001 election, who was out there calling for the national average? It was Mr Hargreaves, the man who called AFP officers the Keystone cops, the former police minister who lost his portfolio because he had been so inept. Now the torch is with Mr Corbell.
It is interesting that, for about a week there, the Labor Party was in favour of a national average of police officers. But they quickly walked away from that. “We do not want too many more cops on the street.” That has never been properly explained. It has never been explained why they betrayed that promise. This is the promise that was broken before they were elected. That is how good a promise it was from the Labor Party. That was their commitment to policing.
But the job has changed; the job is more complex. The whole point of Mr Pratt’s motion is to ensure that we have adequate detail so that we can have a reasonable debate on this. But of course that is not what Mr Corbell is interested in. He will stymie any reasonable debate any time he can. But we know these internal reviews and time and motion studies
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