Page 1318 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 April 2019
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funded. The money spent there has been an excellent return on investment, it has reduced the workload of police and it has made our community safer at the same time.
Yarrabi Bamirr is another example. It is a family-centric service support model for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It involves a range of agencies, including Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services, the Domestic Violence Crisis Service, ACT Policing, the Aboriginal Legal Service, and Mulleun Mura at the Women’s Legal Centre, co-designing and delivering culturally sensitive and intensive support to families. This is all about working with families to be self-reliant in navigating the service system and helping them to avoid interactions with the justice system through the various pathways that help them get their lives on track.
Ngurrambai is another example. It supports people to meet their bail conditions. We know that, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this can be challenging. We find that they end up with justice procedure offences and the police have to execute arrest warrants. Often they have not done anything particularly criminal but they have failed to meet various conditions. Again, this is about breaking that cycle of involvement in the criminal justice system.
There are a number of other examples in the space that I could talk about, but I will save those for another day. Today we are particularly focusing on policing. We will be supporting Minister Gentlemen’s amendment today, which we believe accurately reflects the funding that ACT Policing is receiving from the ACT government, including measures contained in the 2018-19 budget.
The amendment makes a clear undertaking to continue to work with ACT Policing. I know, through discussions that I am involved in as part of the government, that there is a very active, ongoing discussion with Policing about how they deliver police services in the future. I am very optimistic about the discussions we are having with ACT Policing. I think they have a very clear vision of the future of policing in the ACT, and I look forward to working with them to implement that vision and continue to make Canberra one of the safest places to live in Australia.
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (4.22): I thank members for their contributions. I respect Minister Rattenbury for at least addressing the issue of police numbers, unlike the minister, who did not mention it once in his speech. That is very telling. Minister Rattenbury claims that the central point is keeping the community safe. Indeed it is, but the method we use to keep the community safe is our police force. The cost of not having enough police—and there clearly are not enough police in the ACT—is breaking the backs of those who serve us as police.
As I have said many times in this place, front-line serving officers in this city are not the types who will call in the blue flu and stop turning up for extra shifts. They will just do them until they get injured or somebody gets depressed, cannot cope with their life and ends up with post-traumatic stress disorder. The response from Minister Rattenbury shows that no matter how many times he has been out with police he does not understand that the state of play at the moment is extraordinary. Our police carry an extraordinarily huge load compared to any other place in the country.
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