Mr AH KIT - 1997-02-25
At the risk of being referred to as another whingeing, whining, carping Territorian, I ask if the Chief Minister will admit that fewer than 50% of the police in Katherine were on duty last week. Will he admit also that Katherine police have enough staff to provide only one night patrol to protect the streets of Katherine?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I cannot give an authoritative answer to the member for Arnhem. I am sure that people listening to this broadcast will accept and understand that I do not sit at my desk, poring over the police manning schedules, or that I would know necessarily how police resources are being allocated. That is why ...
Mr Bailey: Has the shortage of staff been brought to your attention?
Mr STONE: The question is unreasonable. I am happy to go away and obtain an answer for the honourable member. However, when I was last ...
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: If the member for Wanguri will be quiet, it will allow me the opportunity to answer the question from the member for Arnhem.
When I was last in Katherine, I met with the town council and others who are involved with what I think is the law and order committee, and we talked about police manning figures.
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We talked also about the night patrol. I am sure the member for Arnhem is familiar with the activities of that group, and the very generous support that has been forthcoming for it from the Territory government, being in the order of $150 000. That is in addition to the police resources that are allocated to the town. I met and discussed these concerns with the mayor, Jim Forscutt, and a number of members of that committee.
A couple of myths were doing the rounds. The reality is that not all police will be available at any one time because, like anyone else, police have a right to take holidays. As has anyone else, they have the right to take a day off if they fall ill. The reality is that, in any organisation, all members of the full establishment are rarely on deck at the same time. It is very easy for members of the Labor Party to come here and decry the fact that there is not a 100% turn-up on any one day. If they were serious about setting that standard, they might look among their own ranks and try to explain why they have people who occasionally are not present, for whatever reason, when the parliament is sitting. At any time, anybody in any organisation has certain rights to take leave. If numbers are down, it is a consequence of people going on leave, undertaking training or being allocated to other duties as determined by police management. That is the simple fact of it. However, I assure the member for Arnhem
and the people in Katherine that, if numbers are inordinately down, I will have a close look at the situation.
I call again on the Labor Party in the Territory to get behind the CLP government and tell Territorians that it is prepared to support options and strategies that put in jail the little grubs who break into people's homes, who defile people's personal property and who conduct themselves in a way that ordinary people find totally unacceptable.
Ms Martin: Rubbish!
Mr STONE: The member for Fannie Bay says this is rubbish.
Mr Ah Kit: You have become a little Napoleon.
Mr STONE: That was very cutting, Jack.
I am at a loss to understand why the Labor Party is so soft on crime in the Territory. I am at a loss to understand why members opposite are more concerned for the offenders than they are for the victims. It comes through in everything they do. It comes through in the contributions that they make to every debate on any law-and-order issue. The soft underbelly of the Labor Party in the Territory is evident. Members opposite are not standing up for Territorians. They are not prepared to support the CLP government's law-and-order measures. They constantly oppose mandatory sentencing ...
Members interjecting.
Mr STONE: They are lukewarm about truth in sentencing. They interject because they do not want the people listening to this broadcast to know the truth about them. The people do not want to hear the Labor Party's excuses about why they are soft on crime. Do members recall the previous Leader of the Opposition who wanted to canvass advice on law and order issues? What did he do? He wrote to convicted murderers serving time at the Berrimah
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prison, soliciting their advice. That was the real measure of what the Labor Party in the Territory was all about. It has a greater preoccupation with the offenders.
The Leader of the Opposition is squirming in her seat because she is mortally embarrassed by the weak-kneed response of her party to crime. The reality is that, if the Labor Party in the Territory were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the CLP government on sentencing options, we would have a better and safer community and Labor could finally claim that it was standing up for Territorians. Until it does that, it will have no credibility.
Mr Bailey: We have the highest crime rate in Australia.
Mr STONE: I will pick up the interjection from the member for Wanguri who claims that we have the highest crime rate in Australia. He knows the truth. The truth is that that is certainly the case in some areas, but not in others. It is not right across the board.
I listened to the ABC reporter Liz Byrne this morning on the Fred McCue show. She said that she had been told certain things by the Institute of Criminology that stood in stark contrast to what the Commissioner for Police had told her. Ms Byrne was not trying to promote one set of figures against the other, but she did make the important concession that the commissioner might have had at his fingertips the raw data as to who does what in terms of crime in the Territory. Why will members opposite not give a little credit to organisations like Task Force Surf which, since it was set up about 18 months ago ...
Mr Ah Kit: Excellent!
Mr STONE: You interject `excellent', but you never talk about it. You never get to your feet and direct a question to me, as Minister for Police, in which you give it at least an accolade, and congratulate Task Force Surf and Matt Sodoli and his team. In the time that Task Force Surf has been set up, it has apprehended some 630 offenders and cleared up some 3619 offences. That is in the past 18 months alone. It has also recovered over $2m-worth of property.
Do not try to tell me that police are not doing their jobs, because they are. I am sure people listening to this broadcast would be interested to know, in relation to the assault on Rudi Steinkes, the man who lives outside Uncle Sam's from time to time, that the alleged offender has been taken into custody. That is good news, and it is yet another example of the very good police work that is being done.
Territorians should not believe for one moment that our police numbers are down. In fact, the establishment, the actual number of police in the Territory police service today, is at an all-time high. To quote the very authoritative service-provision report, we are spending more per head of population on police. The member for Wanguri nods. He knows it is true that we have more police per head of population than anywhere else in Australia.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: I will give a comparison, if members opposite will be quiet, in terms of expenditure per head of population. This is from a report on government service provision,
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undertaken by the Industry Commission and published on 14 February. It is not propaganda from this government. The fact is that $433 per head of population is spent on police. Compare that with Tasmania which spends $160 per head.
Mr Bailey: Tasmania is a bit smaller.
Mr STONE: It is smaller, but the figure in the Territory is about 3 times that in Tasmania. I am saying to the member for Wanguri that the relativities are there. The simple fact is - and members opposite cannot get away from this - that we spend $94m a year on the police budget. That is 3% of our total budget. They cannot show me another state or territory government anywhere in Australia that is spending that sort of money.
I am the first to concede that not everyone will be happy. People ring up to say that their property has been violated. It is important to them. I know that because I have been robbed. My house was broken into, and I was outraged. When I rang and reported it ...
Mr Bailey: Which house?
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr STONE: For the benefit of the member for Wanguri, it was my single house in Alice Springs where I lived at the time. If he wants to go down that track, perhaps we can start talking about the Leader of the Opposition and where she actually lives.
Mr Bailey: Sensitive are we, Shane?
Mr STONE: What I am sensitive about is the constant interruptions because the member for Wanguri does not want Territorians to hear the truth. He takes the view that, if he can blot out the answer in the public broadcast, somehow he will prevent people from discovering the facts.
As I said, $94m or 3% of our budget is spent on police. No other jurisdiction in Australia is spending that much money. Nevertheless, people are disappointed. I was recounting my own example. I rang and the police asked whether anything was taken. My reply was no because, as I came in the front door, the thieves heard me and went out the back door. I admit that I was quite put out. Why didn't the police come immediately? Why weren't 4 police cars screaming up to my house to deal with the issue? When I thought about it later, I realised that the reality was that other matters were occupying the police at the time. I did what the police asked. I went to the police station and made a report. It is not that the police are not interested. It is not that the police or the government do not care. It is a matter of how police resources are utilised.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: The member for Wanguri may continue to interject all he wants. It is how the resources are used. It is not a lack of resources. Get that clear now. Members opposite are seeking probably to work this up into a censure motion because they are embarrassed by the fact that there is to be a ministerial statement. They have been gazumped yet again in the
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course of these sittings. The question that I ask members opposite is, where will they get the money for all these things they are promising? How would they pay for an additional 100 police?
Mr Bailey: Stop the member for Katherine staying at the Savoy, for one thing.
Mr STONE: What services would they cut to Territorians to achieve this outcome? The facts are that they would not do any of this. This is all part of their rhetoric of saying: `Elect us, give us a chance and we will do these things'.
Mrs Hickey: Yep.
Mr STONE: She says `yep'. Very Freudian! This is the person who could not be trusted to do the shopping. This is the person who could not be trusted with the economy. This is the person who uses taxpayers' money to peddle ALP party-political literature. She must have spent about $30 000 to $40 000. Do not talk about the Treasurer staying at the Savoy because, compared with what she has just done, that pales into insignificance. He stayed at an hotel as he was entitled to do. How much taxpayers' money did she spend?
Members opposite have no credibility. Remember the case of the missing documents? Remember the case where they claimed that the documents were taken from the electorate office of the member for Arnhem. They demanded a police inquiry. Do members know how much was spent on that inquiry? I can tell them precisely. It was over $1600 in wages alone. What was the outcome?
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: The outcome, for the benefit of the member for Wanguri, was that the documents had been left lying around in a pub by drunken ALP campaign workers. There had never been a break-in at the member for Arnhem's office.
What about the other example? We had the great document debate in this Chamber last year. How did people find out the dates of other people's birthdays? The police were sent on a wild-goose chase. The Leader of the Opposition came into this Chamber and asked me whether the inquiry was completed or not.
Mr BELL: A point of order, Mr Speaker! The minister was asked a very specific question about low police numbers in Katherine. He has been on his feet for something like 10 minutes, launching a broad diatribe and not answering the question. According to standing orders, answers must be relevant to the questions.
Mr SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The Chief Minister is responding to the all-too-many interjections from the opposition.
Mr Bailey: You don't answer ...
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for Wanguri is reminded that he is on a warning. If he continues, he will be named.
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Mr STONE: In fact, I have gone full circle. I was asked a question about Katherine and now I am back in Katherine, talking about this misdirected police inquiry and the waste of police resources on chasing their own tails.
Let us come back to the other example when, towards the end of last year, the Leader of the Opposition, in her pursuit of those who revealed birth dates - as if that was the most earth-shattering thing that anyone would ever find out about someone - put it to me that the inquiry was still continuing. That came as a great surprise to me. We had spent considerable police time and resources on pursuing that matter. The cost ran into many thousands of dollars. I thought the matter had been concluded, and it was not. Why not? Because the new top gun the Leader of the Opposition had brought from Victoria was continuing to ring up police and dob in names. The police were obliged to continue the inquiries. Through her staff member, she named a swag of people all around the country and sent police off on yet another wild-goose chase only to find that they still had the same answer - the government had done nothing wrong.
She has no credibility when she comes in here whining about police resources. She wastes police resources on those sorts of party-political wild-goose chases. She diverts the police to run her political agenda and then she complains about resources not being used in other ways. There are 2 concrete examples. The first was when she tried to cover up what happened in the Katherine pub. Police were sent to conduct an inquiry that revealed that the documents had been left behind by the ALP's own campaign workers. How many police and how much time and money did that cost? The second was the absolute sham that she ran in relation to birth dates and the way she tried to keep that inquiry going by getting her new top gun to ring up police and dob in people who were then subject to further investigation. The opposition has no credibility. The Territory has the best-resourced police force in Australia and more police per head of population than anywhere else in Australia.
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ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I cannot give an authoritative answer to the member for Arnhem. I am sure that people listening to this broadcast will accept and understand that I do not sit at my desk, poring over the police manning schedules, or that I would know necessarily how police resources are being allocated. That is why ...
Mr Bailey: Has the shortage of staff been brought to your attention?
Mr STONE: The question is unreasonable. I am happy to go away and obtain an answer for the honourable member. However, when I was last ...
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: If the member for Wanguri will be quiet, it will allow me the opportunity to answer the question from the member for Arnhem.
When I was last in Katherine, I met with the town council and others who are involved with what I think is the law and order committee, and we talked about police manning figures.
Page 1949
We talked also about the night patrol. I am sure the member for Arnhem is familiar with the activities of that group, and the very generous support that has been forthcoming for it from the Territory government, being in the order of $150 000. That is in addition to the police resources that are allocated to the town. I met and discussed these concerns with the mayor, Jim Forscutt, and a number of members of that committee.
A couple of myths were doing the rounds. The reality is that not all police will be available at any one time because, like anyone else, police have a right to take holidays. As has anyone else, they have the right to take a day off if they fall ill. The reality is that, in any organisation, all members of the full establishment are rarely on deck at the same time. It is very easy for members of the Labor Party to come here and decry the fact that there is not a 100% turn-up on any one day. If they were serious about setting that standard, they might look among their own ranks and try to explain why they have people who occasionally are not present, for whatever reason, when the parliament is sitting. At any time, anybody in any organisation has certain rights to take leave. If numbers are down, it is a consequence of people going on leave, undertaking training or being allocated to other duties as determined by police management. That is the simple fact of it. However, I assure the member for Arnhem
and the people in Katherine that, if numbers are inordinately down, I will have a close look at the situation.
I call again on the Labor Party in the Territory to get behind the CLP government and tell Territorians that it is prepared to support options and strategies that put in jail the little grubs who break into people's homes, who defile people's personal property and who conduct themselves in a way that ordinary people find totally unacceptable.
Ms Martin: Rubbish!
Mr STONE: The member for Fannie Bay says this is rubbish.
Mr Ah Kit: You have become a little Napoleon.
Mr STONE: That was very cutting, Jack.
I am at a loss to understand why the Labor Party is so soft on crime in the Territory. I am at a loss to understand why members opposite are more concerned for the offenders than they are for the victims. It comes through in everything they do. It comes through in the contributions that they make to every debate on any law-and-order issue. The soft underbelly of the Labor Party in the Territory is evident. Members opposite are not standing up for Territorians. They are not prepared to support the CLP government's law-and-order measures. They constantly oppose mandatory sentencing ...
Members interjecting.
Mr STONE: They are lukewarm about truth in sentencing. They interject because they do not want the people listening to this broadcast to know the truth about them. The people do not want to hear the Labor Party's excuses about why they are soft on crime. Do members recall the previous Leader of the Opposition who wanted to canvass advice on law and order issues? What did he do? He wrote to convicted murderers serving time at the Berrimah
Page 1950
prison, soliciting their advice. That was the real measure of what the Labor Party in the Territory was all about. It has a greater preoccupation with the offenders.
The Leader of the Opposition is squirming in her seat because she is mortally embarrassed by the weak-kneed response of her party to crime. The reality is that, if the Labor Party in the Territory were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the CLP government on sentencing options, we would have a better and safer community and Labor could finally claim that it was standing up for Territorians. Until it does that, it will have no credibility.
Mr Bailey: We have the highest crime rate in Australia.
Mr STONE: I will pick up the interjection from the member for Wanguri who claims that we have the highest crime rate in Australia. He knows the truth. The truth is that that is certainly the case in some areas, but not in others. It is not right across the board.
I listened to the ABC reporter Liz Byrne this morning on the Fred McCue show. She said that she had been told certain things by the Institute of Criminology that stood in stark contrast to what the Commissioner for Police had told her. Ms Byrne was not trying to promote one set of figures against the other, but she did make the important concession that the commissioner might have had at his fingertips the raw data as to who does what in terms of crime in the Territory. Why will members opposite not give a little credit to organisations like Task Force Surf which, since it was set up about 18 months ago ...
Mr Ah Kit: Excellent!
Mr STONE: You interject `excellent', but you never talk about it. You never get to your feet and direct a question to me, as Minister for Police, in which you give it at least an accolade, and congratulate Task Force Surf and Matt Sodoli and his team. In the time that Task Force Surf has been set up, it has apprehended some 630 offenders and cleared up some 3619 offences. That is in the past 18 months alone. It has also recovered over $2m-worth of property.
Do not try to tell me that police are not doing their jobs, because they are. I am sure people listening to this broadcast would be interested to know, in relation to the assault on Rudi Steinkes, the man who lives outside Uncle Sam's from time to time, that the alleged offender has been taken into custody. That is good news, and it is yet another example of the very good police work that is being done.
Territorians should not believe for one moment that our police numbers are down. In fact, the establishment, the actual number of police in the Territory police service today, is at an all-time high. To quote the very authoritative service-provision report, we are spending more per head of population on police. The member for Wanguri nods. He knows it is true that we have more police per head of population than anywhere else in Australia.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: I will give a comparison, if members opposite will be quiet, in terms of expenditure per head of population. This is from a report on government service provision,
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undertaken by the Industry Commission and published on 14 February. It is not propaganda from this government. The fact is that $433 per head of population is spent on police. Compare that with Tasmania which spends $160 per head.
Mr Bailey: Tasmania is a bit smaller.
Mr STONE: It is smaller, but the figure in the Territory is about 3 times that in Tasmania. I am saying to the member for Wanguri that the relativities are there. The simple fact is - and members opposite cannot get away from this - that we spend $94m a year on the police budget. That is 3% of our total budget. They cannot show me another state or territory government anywhere in Australia that is spending that sort of money.
I am the first to concede that not everyone will be happy. People ring up to say that their property has been violated. It is important to them. I know that because I have been robbed. My house was broken into, and I was outraged. When I rang and reported it ...
Mr Bailey: Which house?
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr STONE: For the benefit of the member for Wanguri, it was my single house in Alice Springs where I lived at the time. If he wants to go down that track, perhaps we can start talking about the Leader of the Opposition and where she actually lives.
Mr Bailey: Sensitive are we, Shane?
Mr STONE: What I am sensitive about is the constant interruptions because the member for Wanguri does not want Territorians to hear the truth. He takes the view that, if he can blot out the answer in the public broadcast, somehow he will prevent people from discovering the facts.
As I said, $94m or 3% of our budget is spent on police. No other jurisdiction in Australia is spending that much money. Nevertheless, people are disappointed. I was recounting my own example. I rang and the police asked whether anything was taken. My reply was no because, as I came in the front door, the thieves heard me and went out the back door. I admit that I was quite put out. Why didn't the police come immediately? Why weren't 4 police cars screaming up to my house to deal with the issue? When I thought about it later, I realised that the reality was that other matters were occupying the police at the time. I did what the police asked. I went to the police station and made a report. It is not that the police are not interested. It is not that the police or the government do not care. It is a matter of how police resources are utilised.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: The member for Wanguri may continue to interject all he wants. It is how the resources are used. It is not a lack of resources. Get that clear now. Members opposite are seeking probably to work this up into a censure motion because they are embarrassed by the fact that there is to be a ministerial statement. They have been gazumped yet again in the
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course of these sittings. The question that I ask members opposite is, where will they get the money for all these things they are promising? How would they pay for an additional 100 police?
Mr Bailey: Stop the member for Katherine staying at the Savoy, for one thing.
Mr STONE: What services would they cut to Territorians to achieve this outcome? The facts are that they would not do any of this. This is all part of their rhetoric of saying: `Elect us, give us a chance and we will do these things'.
Mrs Hickey: Yep.
Mr STONE: She says `yep'. Very Freudian! This is the person who could not be trusted to do the shopping. This is the person who could not be trusted with the economy. This is the person who uses taxpayers' money to peddle ALP party-political literature. She must have spent about $30 000 to $40 000. Do not talk about the Treasurer staying at the Savoy because, compared with what she has just done, that pales into insignificance. He stayed at an hotel as he was entitled to do. How much taxpayers' money did she spend?
Members opposite have no credibility. Remember the case of the missing documents? Remember the case where they claimed that the documents were taken from the electorate office of the member for Arnhem. They demanded a police inquiry. Do members know how much was spent on that inquiry? I can tell them precisely. It was over $1600 in wages alone. What was the outcome?
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Mr STONE: The outcome, for the benefit of the member for Wanguri, was that the documents had been left lying around in a pub by drunken ALP campaign workers. There had never been a break-in at the member for Arnhem's office.
What about the other example? We had the great document debate in this Chamber last year. How did people find out the dates of other people's birthdays? The police were sent on a wild-goose chase. The Leader of the Opposition came into this Chamber and asked me whether the inquiry was completed or not.
Mr BELL: A point of order, Mr Speaker! The minister was asked a very specific question about low police numbers in Katherine. He has been on his feet for something like 10 minutes, launching a broad diatribe and not answering the question. According to standing orders, answers must be relevant to the questions.
Mr SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The Chief Minister is responding to the all-too-many interjections from the opposition.
Mr Bailey: You don't answer ...
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for Wanguri is reminded that he is on a warning. If he continues, he will be named.
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Mr STONE: In fact, I have gone full circle. I was asked a question about Katherine and now I am back in Katherine, talking about this misdirected police inquiry and the waste of police resources on chasing their own tails.
Let us come back to the other example when, towards the end of last year, the Leader of the Opposition, in her pursuit of those who revealed birth dates - as if that was the most earth-shattering thing that anyone would ever find out about someone - put it to me that the inquiry was still continuing. That came as a great surprise to me. We had spent considerable police time and resources on pursuing that matter. The cost ran into many thousands of dollars. I thought the matter had been concluded, and it was not. Why not? Because the new top gun the Leader of the Opposition had brought from Victoria was continuing to ring up police and dob in names. The police were obliged to continue the inquiries. Through her staff member, she named a swag of people all around the country and sent police off on yet another wild-goose chase only to find that they still had the same answer - the government had done nothing wrong.
She has no credibility when she comes in here whining about police resources. She wastes police resources on those sorts of party-political wild-goose chases. She diverts the police to run her political agenda and then she complains about resources not being used in other ways. There are 2 concrete examples. The first was when she tried to cover up what happened in the Katherine pub. Police were sent to conduct an inquiry that revealed that the documents had been left behind by the ALP's own campaign workers. How many police and how much time and money did that cost? The second was the absolute sham that she ran in relation to birth dates and the way she tried to keep that inquiry going by getting her new top gun to ring up police and dob in people who were then subject to further investigation. The opposition has no credibility. The Territory has the best-resourced police force in Australia and more police per head of population than anywhere else in Australia.
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Last updated: 09 Aug 2016