Ms WALKER - 2011-05-03
Can you please outline for the House the extent of the government’s commitment to Police, Fire and Emergency services in Budget 2011-12?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Nhulunbuy for her question. This is a record budget for Police - an increase of 140% in the Police budget since Labor took office in 2001. This is about providing a safer community and giving the police the tools they need to do their job.
I have an idea for the Leader of the Opposition. A previous savings measure so beloved of four CLP budgets in the early 1990s was not to recruit one single police officer. You can find some money there. You can slash the Police budget and freeze expenditure on police, because you have done that before. Maybe that will be in the speech tomorrow: freeze the Police budget for four years, do not recruit one extra police officer. I am sure you can find some savings if you were to do that.
We have had an extra 400 police in our police force since 2002. In the budget this year, the forensic science branch will be boosted by $2.5m, with an extra $1.2m to expand the laboratories. We will fund the Police Beats to a tune of $7.37m a year. There are some savings for the Leader of the Opposition. We know he has a policy to close the Police Beats in Alice Springs, Casuarina, Palmerston, Parap, Nightcliff, and the northern suburbs. There is an additional $1.75m to maintain CCTV in Darwin, Casuarina, Palmerston and Alice Springs, and to expand monitoring of those. Significant initiatives in the budget include $1.5m for implementation of the police bans under the alcohol reform package, and $800 000 for nursing staff to be stationed at police watch-houses to provide an increased level of health screening for people in custody.
Let us look at the spending in the bush: $15m to continue works on the Gapuwiyak and Ramingining Police Stations as part of A Working Future; $9.4m for the Alparra Police Station in Central Australia; as well as funding of $12.3m for the construction of the new Berrimah fire centre.
This is about keeping people safe across the Northern Territory. It is about giving our police the tools they need to do the job. It is about improving the police presence across the Northern Territory with new police stations, and giving our fire services the new fire station they need to support Palmerston and the East Arm port.
In government you have to make responsible decisions. This is a very modest deficit; it is a deficit that is affordable. We have chosen to go into deficit in part to continue to fund new issues, new services for our police, on the back of eight surplus budgets in a row.
Tomorrow, the Leader of the Opposition will have an opportunity to provide his plan and, hopefully, it will be more than just a super ghetto for public housing in the northern suburbs of Darwin ...
Madam SPEAKER: Chief Minister, your time has expired.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Nhulunbuy for her question. This is a record budget for Police - an increase of 140% in the Police budget since Labor took office in 2001. This is about providing a safer community and giving the police the tools they need to do their job.
I have an idea for the Leader of the Opposition. A previous savings measure so beloved of four CLP budgets in the early 1990s was not to recruit one single police officer. You can find some money there. You can slash the Police budget and freeze expenditure on police, because you have done that before. Maybe that will be in the speech tomorrow: freeze the Police budget for four years, do not recruit one extra police officer. I am sure you can find some savings if you were to do that.
We have had an extra 400 police in our police force since 2002. In the budget this year, the forensic science branch will be boosted by $2.5m, with an extra $1.2m to expand the laboratories. We will fund the Police Beats to a tune of $7.37m a year. There are some savings for the Leader of the Opposition. We know he has a policy to close the Police Beats in Alice Springs, Casuarina, Palmerston, Parap, Nightcliff, and the northern suburbs. There is an additional $1.75m to maintain CCTV in Darwin, Casuarina, Palmerston and Alice Springs, and to expand monitoring of those. Significant initiatives in the budget include $1.5m for implementation of the police bans under the alcohol reform package, and $800 000 for nursing staff to be stationed at police watch-houses to provide an increased level of health screening for people in custody.
Let us look at the spending in the bush: $15m to continue works on the Gapuwiyak and Ramingining Police Stations as part of A Working Future; $9.4m for the Alparra Police Station in Central Australia; as well as funding of $12.3m for the construction of the new Berrimah fire centre.
This is about keeping people safe across the Northern Territory. It is about giving our police the tools they need to do the job. It is about improving the police presence across the Northern Territory with new police stations, and giving our fire services the new fire station they need to support Palmerston and the East Arm port.
In government you have to make responsible decisions. This is a very modest deficit; it is a deficit that is affordable. We have chosen to go into deficit in part to continue to fund new issues, new services for our police, on the back of eight surplus budgets in a row.
Tomorrow, the Leader of the Opposition will have an opportunity to provide his plan and, hopefully, it will be more than just a super ghetto for public housing in the northern suburbs of Darwin ...
Madam SPEAKER: Chief Minister, your time has expired.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016