Page 2428 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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What is really encouraging about this is that it is unlike the tokenistic measures to try and improve community safety which we hear of from those opposite. We hear from those opposite the attempt to beat the law and order drum all the time. Their record in government was abysmal. The number of extra police that they put on to support the community when they were in government is less than half of the total increase we put in place just in the last year—let alone the 107 extra police that this government has financed and will have in place by the end of next year.
It is also very encouraging that we are seeing more and more Canberrans taking up the opportunity to serve in our own community police service. I am very pleased to regularly attend the graduation ceremonies at the police college in Barton. The majority of recruits are often coming from the ACT—young people in their teens and early twenties and older people having a change of career in their late thirties or early forties, wanting to go into the police service. It is very encouraging that we see those local residents joining ACT community policing as well as excellent, talented people from interstate and overseas.
Community policing is going from strength to strength under this government. No other government has such a strong record in increasing the number of police resources and providing police with the living quarters and the working accommodation that they need. Witness the new Woden police station and the funding in this year’s budget to start planning for the new Belconnen police station.
These are commitments the government has honoured and delivered on. We will continue to support police into the future. I am very pleased to advise the Assembly that the extra 107 police funded target is well and truly on the way to being met. The extra 40-odd police this financial year are already in place.
Mr Stanhope: I ask that all further questions be placed on the notice paper.
Supplementary answer to question without notice
Pace egg farm
MR BARR: Mr Speaker, yesterday in question time Dr Foskey asked a question of my colleague the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services in relation to the Pace egg farm. The answer, in fact, lies within the portfolio of the Planning and Land Authority. Dr Foskey asked: did the minister consider it was fair and reasonable to charge $486 per year? I am pleased to advise Dr Foskey that the Crown lease over block 1329, a district of Belconnen, is in fact a rural lease. The application for a further rural Crown lease was assessed under the Land Planning and Environment Act 1991 and the rural policy and the applicable disallowable instrument that provided further rural lease grant conditions.
Schedule 6 of the disallowable instrument provides a land value formula for rural leases less than 21 years. The Australian Valuation Office, as Minister Hargreaves advised yesterday, provided ACTPLA with an annual rent figure of $486 in accordance with schedule 6, formula 2. Dr Foskey asked how it compared with charges imposed on other permitted land uses of a similar nature in the ACT. I can advise that, where a further rural Crown lease has a maximum lease term of 20 years,
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