Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Deregulation, Competition Policy and Sustainable Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, in the few minutes available to me, I want to touch on some very important issues for the Dunkley community around law and order, personal safety and security. These issues have been key priorities for the community I have represented for a number of years now. Together we have been able to achieve some gains in this area and show the way forward for what we need to do in the future.

The installation of CCTV technology in Main Street, Mornington, has been a particularly positive influence and has helped combat antisocial behaviour and small-scale criminality. We are pleased to see that crime statistics in those areas have diminished accordingly. What is most frustrating, however, is that it has been nearly 30 months since the Howard government provided just short of a quarter of a million dollars to Frankston City Council to implement the next stage of the CCTV strategy that we developed together for the main city in the community that I represent. Thankfully, CCTV technology is in place and has been operating for some time—and operating very successfully—at the taxi rank which services the nightclub area in Frankston. But it has been operating on one of the council’s own poles. What is not happening, what is not operating and what is still sitting in boxes waiting to be installed is another half dozen CCTV cameras, which are destined to be deployed around the railway precinct and the bus interchange area.

Our impediment to installing and having this technology available to support law enforcement and public safety initiatives in Frankston is the fact that Jemena will not allow the council to use the poles. Here you have an organisation that is happy to appear to be a public utility when that suits them, happy to benefit from pricing declarations issued by the government, but, when the time comes for that organisation to be part of a community effort to respond to a key priority, where are they? They decline the use of these poles for the CCTV cameras. They say that the council can use them now but they need to have some unlimited liability relating to the deployment on the poles. It really undermines our collective community effort.

We have a non-operational police vehicle for the Frankston area, with the support of Honda; we have trader watch pads initiatives to combat theft of boats; we have had some progress with CCTV in Frankston; a great activity in Mornington, as I have touched on; and calls for more of that work in Mount Eliza, Seaford and on the foreshore in Frankston. I call on Jemena to be a genuine part of the community and help to see these cameras get up. Jemena needs to either get out of the way or find a way forward to get these cameras deployed.

We also need to tackle the fact that Frankston seems to get associated with any act of criminality that goes through Frankston court, and is covered by court reports, relating to the south-east of Melbourne. Let us rename the Frankston court the ‘Southern Metropolitan Court Complex’ so that, if some charges are being pursued through the courts in a facility that just happens to be in the city that I represent, people outside do not think the cause of that criminality also came from the city. It is a simple change that we need to make now. (Time expired)