Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to side very strongly with the ordinary men and women of the thin blue line of Queensland, who are represented by the Queensland Police Union in their efforts to get some proper support from the Queensland state government. In Metro South region, which covers the electorate of Moreton and other areas, according to the 2005-06 Queensland Police Service crime figures, 8,857 people were victims of break-ins, 5,486 people were targeted by fraud and stolen goods, and 451 people were the victims of robbery and armed robbery. Yet the Queensland Minister for Police and Corrective Services, Judy Spence, says that this is not a high crime area. I recently mailed out 4,000 letters to people in the suburb of Moorooka—a great part of the inner south of Brisbane with high hills, great city views and increasing property prices; an enormously culturally diverse area. About 1,100 residents wrote back to me, which I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would agree, is an enormous return rate. They had to pay to send the letter as well, which underlines my point. Those people agreed with me that Moorooka needs a 24-hour police presence.

Minister Spence, on 31 October in the Queensland parliament, as recorded in the Hansard, had a go at me and said that I was overstating the importance of this issue. She said that Moorooka already had a 24-hour police station because, after three o’clock in the afternoon, if you go to Hamilton road in Moorooka and pick up the blue phone you can talk to a police officer. They are miles away, in town. I went to the Moorooka police station the other week and the only movement I saw at the police station at 3.30 in the afternoon was the flickering of a blue alarm light. In other words, there had probably been a break-in at the police station. The people of Moorooka deserve much better.

My call is for a shopfront, a police beat, to be located at the Moorvale shops. In that area we have lots of people new to Australia, new to the area—refugees who have come from African backgrounds. They do not understand some of the skills that are needed to work well in Australia. They sit at the bus stops and a lot of elderly people are saying to me that they feel concerned when, as they come out of the Woolworths door, they are confronted by large groups of these kids. These kids are decent, law-abiding people—as indeed all of these folks are—but they are new to Australia. If we had a police beat located at Moorooka, we could base one of the excellent Queensland Police Service community liaison officers there. The Queensland Police Service have the best practice anywhere in Australia when it comes to community relations work, but there are only two African faces in the ranks. We urgently need the Queensland government to realise that backing local communities and putting faces in the ranks that will bring together people of different backgrounds in communities such as Moorooka will make a difference. They need to listen to the Queensland Police Union and back the local community and the Queensland Police Service. (Time expired).