Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The No. 1 issue in Townsville is crime. There is rarely a day that goes by where the morning news updates don't outline the latest incident contributing to our youth crime. This morning it was a teenage criminal, charged with assaulting a police officer after being intercepted in an alleged stolen car. On Sunday night police were forced to use tyre spikes to stop the car just down the road from my electorate office. The car had been stolen from a home early that morning. Five suspects fled the scene and three were arrested. Later a 14-year-old girl allegedly assaulted an officer during an arrest, and a 16-year-old girl was found with a knife.

Meanwhile, last week we had a police officer left with a broken nose after an attack at a shopping centre. This is what our city has become, and it has been going on for years, but it should not be accepted as business as usual. Unfortunately, that is exactly the approach taken by the state Labor government. In fact, yesterday we had a taste of exactly what the Premier thinks of crime victims by the way her office treats them. Her office showed she simply doesn't care about Townsville's crime when it 'replied all' to an email from a victim of repeated home break-ins saying 'standard response'. No sympathy, no concern; just a generic response ordered for a repeat victim who hasn't felt safe in their home for years. It just proves the state Labor government has completely given up on the issue.

And if that wasn't enough, just hours later we had news that one of its own Townsville MPs, the member for Mundingburra, has wasted police resources, tying them up on a wild-goose chase. The MP put in a request to police to investigate why an ambulance turned up to his house one night when he hadn't called one. It turns out the ambos were a few houses short. But instead of asking where they were meant to go or assisting them with the confusion, he organised the Queensland Police Service to investigate whether it was a hoax call. It's little wonder the people of Townsville have absolutely no confidence in their three state Labor MPs. They're more worried about finding out why their beauty sleep was interrupted than allowing the police to do what they do best: catching and locking up criminals.

My community is desperate for change. They want tougher penalties, and they want detention as a last resort removed from the Youth Justice Act. Yes, we need to look at addressing the underlying issues, but our community wants a solution to stem the bleeding now, before we think about the surgery. What we don't need is MPs wasting police resources on a merry-go-round of youth justice ministers and a Premier who has no sympathy for victims of crime.