Page 2704 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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We have had some conversation as well about ice or crystal meth, as it is known. It has got a few names. I have called for a roundtable. We have called for a task force in actual fact to deal with this in the ACT. It is a critical issue and it is one that we would seek to address in government. I would be the first to acknowledge that the response to dealing with ice is not just through law and order; it is through health, through education, through the Community Services Directorate and, for the people who are affected by this curse of a drug, dealing with them compassionately. It is something that we need to tackle from a whole-of-government perspective.
I would be remiss if I did not note the stumbles that have occurred within the police portfolio over the last period. I think that it has been a great shame, not only to this government but to the community, that we have a situation where a police minister in particular, who should be upholding such high levels of integrity in her office, was found to have been providing sensitive information to the CFMEU. That issue spoke volumes about the nature of this government, of this Labor Party, that they were prepared to put the integrity of the police and sensitive information below the priorities of their CFMEU masters.
I think that was probably one of the shabbier incidents that have occurred with government since the beginning of self-government. Certainly it led to the removal of the minister, which is highly unusual, but the police minister’s office providing sensitive police information about an investigation to the CFMEU—an organisation that was under investigation and an organisation that donates swathes of money to the Labor Party—cannot be looked at in any other way than entirely unacceptable and is one of the reasons why I think that there are many of those in the community who have lost trust in the government. When you cannot trust your own police minister’s office with sensitive police information, how can you trust the government? How can you? That was a shameful incident.
I think also shameful, but in a different way, was the decision by that former minister to cut her police funding, I guess at the behest of Mr Barr, by $15.36 million. We have been talking about the pressure of domestic violence, the scourge of ice, the necessity to deal with bikies and all of the other issues that our police have to deal with, all the problems that we have seen with violence in Civic. (Second speaking period taken.) This government then decided to cut funding to police. It is extraordinary, is it not? That led to job cuts. We have heard a bit about job cuts but these were real job cuts; these were not pretend ones; these were not made-up ones as part of a scare campaign; these were real Labor job cuts from police, some of the hardest working people in our community dealing with some of the most complex issues.
There was an amount restored, I note, of the $15.36 million—about $1.8 million was put back in—so that the final cut to police was $13,484,000. I will say that again: $13,484,000 was the final amount that was cut. As I have said, we will restore that funding to ACT Policing so that they can do their job.
But the very big difference, it would appear, between this side of the chamber and those opposite when it comes to resourcing, when it comes to leaking police sensitive information, is that we respect our police. And that is a very, very big difference.
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