Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to grieve about the law and order situation in Western Australia, specifically in my electorate of Stirling. Local families in my electorate have all had enough of hoons, graffiti and serious antisocial behaviour, including drug dealers, in our streets and communities. It is not good enough that the Western Australian Labor government has failed to adequately protect families in Stirling through its inability to recruit and retain police officers and by axing an important anti-graffiti task force, all the while nursing record royalty revenues from the resource and property booms. It is simply a disgrace. As a local member of my community and as the local member of parliament, I say that enough is enough. I want local families in Stirling to feel safe and free from hoons, drug dealers and graffiti, and I am determined to see that the state government is held accountable, particularly when its coffers are full to record levels.

Only last week I had a number of families call my office about blatant drug deals being made from a house in their street, sometimes in full view of their children. It was not the first time it had happened. It was a tragic situation and these families felt powerless to act. The local police, who do an excellent job, are stretched to the limit, with numbers down and many officers overworked. It is shocking to learn that last year alone there were 368 resignations from the Western Australian Police Service and only 406 recruits, leaving a total of only 38 more officers on the beat in Western Australia. That is just not good enough. Already in January, 53 officers have resigned from the Western Australian Police Service, and naturally this is taking a serious toll. The police hierarchy sent out an SOS only a few weeks ago asking police officers to work an extra eight-hour shift a fortnight—a longer working week that simply must be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of officers. Although the ongoing pay dispute with the police has finally been resolved, I am surprised that it took the state government so long to realise that we needed better pay and working conditions to attract more young people into the police service. We also need to keep experienced officers in the job and out doing what they do best: working to keep our streets safer.

The Carpenter government, which seems to spend most of its time lurching from ministerial crisis to ministerial crisis, is completely failing to provide our community with a fully resourced police service. It has failed to retain senior officers and meet its recruitment targets. I think our police and the people of Stirling deserve much better. Thankfully, hardworking police officers were able to act on the information that my office provided, and a drug raid was made at a house address late last week. However, regular patrols, street beats and community visits are pushing our uniformed officers to the limit and, until police numbers are returned to normal operating levels and they can fulfil these functions, we are leaving the people in Stirling vulnerable to crime.

It is disgraceful that the state Labor government play with the safety of people in this way, and it is disgraceful that they have axed community programs that act to fight crime within our community, particularly within Stirling. One of the best examples of this is when they axed the effective and low-cost Graffiti Task Force. This task force was created by the Court government. It engaged both state and local governments in a united effort to tackle the problem of graffiti and it enjoyed enormous success.

Whilst it is true that graffiti is not the most serious crime a person can commit, we should not underestimate the enormous cost that it creates for the community and the enormous costs that it can create for society as a whole. We should not underestimate the effect it has on people’s perceptions of lawlessness in their neighbourhood. Vandalism such as graffiti does lead to worse crimes and to a perception in the community that crime is out of control. This perception then alters people’s behaviour in a negative way, particularly amongst elderly people who can become prisoners in their own homes if they perceive that going out onto the streets is not safe. I know from research that the fear of crime can sometimes be as bad as crime itself, because the fear of crime can prevent people going about their lives in a normal way, as they would expect to.

The Graffiti Task Force, which was axed by the Labor government, had started to bring the problem of graffiti under control. It had reduced graffiti vandalism by 50 per cent as well as diverting many young people into positive community projects. At its peak, the program encompassed 12 metropolitan councils, including the City of Stirling which covers my electorate, and undertook approximately 18,500 clean-ups per year. Labor abolished this highly successful task force in 2002, smugly shirking its responsibilities to the community and forcing the enormous costs of graffiti clean-up onto our local councils. It never explained why it killed off this successful program. The cost of the program, which provided a coordinated and highly successful approach to tackling the problem of graffiti, was only $400,000. This was from a government swimming in revenue as a result of the Western Australian mining and property booms. In fact, it is expected that the Carpenter government will collect an extra $1.9 billion in this financial year and over $2.2 billion in the next financial year. Yet Labor continues to force our councils into spending huge amounts of money on something that is rightly a state government responsibility. This money that the councils spend could be better spent on roads, recreational facilities, services or cuts to property rates. Once again, the Carpenter Labor government is not listening to the concerns of Western Australian people.

Rapid removal of graffiti is a great deterrent to would-be offenders and helps to ensure that our families and small business owners feel safe in their own neighbourhoods and in the protection of their property. The re-establishment of the Graffiti Task Force is needed to help people feel safe and to help our local governments start to put money back into where it is needed most: directly into our communities.

I believe that the electors of Stirling deserve better from the state government. I believe that they deserve to feel secure when they are in their own homes. Community safety is worth fighting for. The Howard government has continued to play its part through its funding of the National Community Crime Prevention Program. Already in my local area we have funded security cameras for important community facilities. I will continue to fight for projects within Stirling to tackle crime and lawlessness.

The heart of this problem is a state government that refuses to take responsibility for the things it was elected to do. It now lazily blames Canberra for every conceivable ill. I had hopes for Premier Carpenter, who boldly stated when he took over the job that he was going to end this tradition of Western Australian governments blaming the federal government for everything that goes wrong in Western Australia, but sadly he has not been good to his word.

Besides the problem with crime and lawlessness, I grieve particularly about the state of Reid Highway in my electorate. Because of its failure to take responsibility for building overpasses for this highway where it intersects with Mirrabooka Avenue and Alexander Drive, the state government is putting the safety of members of my community at serious risk. The state government refuses to do the job it was elected to do. Although Reid Highway is 100 per cent a state government responsibility, the state government fails to allocate the resources needed to build these much needed overpasses. Predictably, it was tempted to blame the Commonwealth for its failure, but I intend to continue to inform the people of Stirling that state roads are 100 per cent a state government responsibility and that our community expects the state government to live up to its responsibilities. I intend to hold the Carpenter government to account for its failure to properly resource the police service and tackle law and order in Stirling and for its failure to build these much needed overpasses that continue to put the lives of people in my electorate at risk.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted and I put the question:

That grievances be noted.

Question agreed to.