Page 1800 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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came to visit me recently at the Assembly to tell me about their work—is that there is clearly a new generation of people reinvigorating Neighbourhood Watch. The perception in the community might be that it is an old people’s thing, that the older members of the community drive Neighbourhood Watch. There is actually a new generation putting real energy into the organisation, and I think that is exciting and good for the Canberra community.
With regard to Mr Doszpot’s motion, the Greens fully support the statement that everyone has the right to feel safe in their own neighbourhoods. Recently, the Greens have been actively engaged in the ongoing debate around the need for a safe and vibrant Canberra nightlife. That discussion is focused on Civic and other entertainment areas. However, the starting premise for that work was the belief that everyone has the right to feel safe and secure in public. Canberra should be a place for everyone, but the unfortunate thing is that that is not the reality.
We certainly learnt through our consultation process that not everyone does feel safe at night. As I say, that is particularly in our entertainment areas but, thinking about Neighbourhood Watch today and general community safety, there is an important role for Neighbourhood Watch in educating and informing people about how they can take steps to live more securely, about how they can be conscious of their own personal safety and how they can contribute to their community and that safety across the whole community.
One important point that Neighbourhood Watch make very clear is that misinformation can cause people to be more fearful than they need to be. To that end, they have published on their website the “Personal Safety Ten”. It is a list of 10 principles that I think we should all bear in mind. I would like to discuss the first two principles briefly in the course of this debate.
The first principle is:
We all have the right to feel safe and the responsibility to ensure others feel safe as well.
Mr Doszpot’s motion reflects this principle very well. The second principle that Neighbourhood Watch state is:
Don’t let the fear of crime hold you back—Quite often the fear is much greater than the reality.
This is a salient point when it comes to paragraph 1(c) of today’s motion, which is presumably based on—Mr Doszpot has touched on this—a recent Canberra Times front page article. The police data that that article reports comes to a total of 52 per cent of those crimes being reported occurring in Woden and Tuggeranong. However, I do not believe this information should be used to place those communities under a fear of crime. To build on fear would be irresponsible and ignores that second principle of Neighbourhood Watch.
There are two key ways in which these statistics can be misunderstood, and I think, unfortunately, some of that does come through in Mr Doszpot’s motion. In
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