Page 186 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2008
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with the AHA, police and the police union as well as with retailers and other groups with an interest in the nightclub scene and, in particular, safety in Civic, Kingston and Manuka after dark. For that reason, before the most recent series of incidents which sparked some concern in the public debate in Canberra, the government already had in place and in train a range of measures to address some of these issues. I foreshadow that I will move an amendment which deals with the issues that the government has been putting into place.
I think it is fair to say that the incidents that occurred at Kingston and in the city that were reported over the Christmas and January period were not perhaps as significant as reported. Nevertheless, they were significant enough to warrant some further looking into this area. The government’s approach is one which is very much a multitiered approach. It includes providing for a more visible law enforcement presence, reviewing liquor licensing legislation and approaches, trialling a new taxi program in Civic and investigating the extension of the public place CCTV system. I would like to talk in detail about each of these new initiatives.
Firstly, I would like to talk about the issue of compliance. ACT Policing and Office of Regulatory Services personnel regularly meet to discuss the implementation of and the follow-up from joint liquor licensing operations. Since I became minister, I have asked ORS to work more work more closely with Policing, because all police are licensed liquor inspectors. That work is bearing some fruit already. I am advised that recently a number of successful compliance actions have been taken in the Liquor Licensing Board against nightclubs and other licensed premises found to be in breach of their conditions. Most recently, the nightclub at the centre of the debate at Kingston was fined $5,000 for a range of breaches of its licence conditions. That shows that we are taking action to address these issues. Responsibility rests not only with the government but also with liquor licensees and people who consume alcohol and perhaps consume too much.
ACT Policing conduct proactive patrols of Manuka, Kingston and Civic. As members would be aware, the government has significantly increased the number of police available to ACT Policing. An additional 107 police are now available to ACT Policing. As Mr Seselja highlighted, in the coming months that will result in a major change to rosters that will provide police with greater capacity to respond at surge periods when things get busy, including at night on Fridays and Saturdays.
It is worth highlighting that the government does not support the approach endorsed by Mr Smyth as the new shadow minister for police. Whilst I was not here at the time, it has been reliably reported to me, and I think it is on the public record, that Mr Smyth proposed that police dogs and mounted units should be used to deal with crowd behaviour problems in Civic, Kingston and Manuka. These were not solutions raised at Mr Seselja’s round table, nor were they mentioned by Mr Seselja in his speech. Mr Seselja is taking a much wiser approach on this issue than is his deputy.
It is well recognised that police dogs are not friendly ambassadors of law enforcement. Police dogs are specially trained for a range of duties, including controlling high-risk offenders in threatening circumstances. We do not support the use of police dogs as a regular patrol tool in the city; nor do we support the use of police mounted capacity. Again, it is not the sort of image that is what we want in the city centre. Having police walking around on the beat talking to people is the best way to manage those issues.
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