Page 3342 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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seeing deals going down, too often in broad daylight, we know that people are committing crimes at that shopping centre without fear of being caught. The Red Hill shopping centre is suffering a bad name because of that behaviour. It is not attracting the shoppers it feels it can. The shopkeepers talk about a range of decreased activity of between 10 and 20 per cent over the last 18 months.
The situation is repeated with various degrees of seriousness across the ACT, with government housing tenants in both public housing complexes and ACT government single housing responsible for a disproportionate amount of neighbourhood and shopping centre crime and disorder. I have a number of examples to illustrate and support the argument that I am putting forward here this afternoon.
I will start with Pleasance Place, Belconnen. I refer to an article in the Sunday Times of 15 October. The Sunday Times quoted frightened elderly residents “living under a constant barrage of foul language and threats of violence”. These good people have experienced constant break-ins and vandalism and are being monstered by a minority who have a long, hard reach. The residents say that getting police to attend calls for help is exceedingly difficult. Perhaps the police are sick of it. They advise that they do not see proactive police patrolling there.
You cannot always expect police to turn out in time in response to a crime that has been committed. You would hope that they would be able to turn out when a crime is in progress. But certainly what the opposition is saying is that the police need to more proactively patrol these areas, turn up and eyeball the people that the residents know are causing the trouble and making life hell in these places.
Let me talk about Crichton Crescent, Kambah. I was down there last Saturday afternoon, and I was there a month ago. Residents in this quiet suburban street have been the victims of constant antisocial behaviour, including constant vandalism to their letterboxes, the running of trail bikes over their front lawns, in some cases the running of motorbikes quite brazenly straight down their driveways and out through the back of their properties, the detonation of quite large pipe bombs and attacks on house pets by spear-wielding youths. In one case a resident alleges that bullets have even been fired into the roof of his home because he says that he had been identified as a person constantly calling police about them. I do not know whether bullets have been fired into his roof—
Mr Corbell: The police have attended his house and they have inspected—
MR PRATT: I know that. They have attended on two occasions. A traffic policeman has been up on his roof and looked at the damage. I have been up on his roof and looked at the damage, and the damage is peculiar. I do not know whether it is really a bullet hole. I believe that the police have yet to determine whether it is a bullet hole. However, this resident is a man of good reputation in that neighbourhood, and, while he might be mistaken about what has happened to his house, he certainly is not mistaken that his house has been attacked with something. And that is the point, is it not?
The residents there feel that the name of that street and property values in that street are being affected by this constant harassment, this recidivist behaviour. What they are saying is that this is behaviour by a small number of people living in only a couple of
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