Country Policing

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (15:45): I want to take this opportunity to talk about a recent trip I made into the wonderful South-East of our state. I saw the member for MacKillop just before and I was hoping he would stick around; I know it is unparliamentary to comment on persons present or not in this chamber. It certainly is a very nice part of the world and I was very pleased to visit it. I was invited down by the Hon. Clare Scriven MLC from the other place, who is a resident of the Limestone Coast.

We held a series of meetings and various public events around law and order in the South-East and on the Limestone Coast. I understand that it is called the Limestone Coast now and that we do not call it the South-East in polite company. I was very pleased to visit there and, essentially, we went to four different places: Mount Gambier, where we stayed the night and met some people but, more importantly, we went to Bordertown, Kalangadoo and Millicent. These are three places all with different concerns about law and order in their community and about the deterioration, as they see it, of police services in their area.

There are two main issues: one issue that concerns Kalangadoo particularly but another issue that concerns the whole of the Limestone Coast region. The larger grievance they have down there, as I am sure the member for MacKillop knows, and I hope the Minister for Police knows by now, is the movement of the detective CIB services into Mount Gambier as a centralisation of CIB services. These are decisions of the local police command, I understand, so essentially decisions of the commissioner and not of the minister, but they are causing great unrest.

There is a concern across the region, particularly in Millicent but also in Bordertown and in smaller places like Kalangadoo, that what you lose when you centralise a CIB service is a familiarity with the terrain, so that when a crime is committed—a serious crime or a crime of any nature that requires CIB attention—people coming from outside, whether from the city or from Mount Gambier, may not know the terrain, may not know the crooks, may not know the people to talk to, may not know the local identities and may not have the background to sort things out.

This comes against a background of promises by the then opposition and now government around country policing. As we know, and as I am sure the Minister for Police will tell us ad nauseam, there is a country policing review, which is entirely the preserve of the police commissioner. That is true and that is as it should be. However, that was not what they were telling people before the election. There were some explicit comments in The Border Watch, and I think in this place, by the now Minister for Transport about the preservation of country policing services. Certainly, in places like Millicent and Bordertown they feel deeply disappointed about this.

The country policing review, of course, is not complete, but the residents of the South-East—and the Riverland, I am reliably informed—expect good things from the country policing review. They expect, as they were promised either explicitly or implicitly before the election, that their policing services will be improved, reinstated or however they want to look at it.

The smaller meeting at Kalangadoo was by far the largest public meeting we held down there. The Hon. Clare Scriven MLC and I were joined by Des Noll, who is now the new mayor of Wattle Range Council. I want to congratulate Des. It was good to meet him. He showed us around a little bit and introduced us to a few people and was good company while we were in Kalangadoo and Millicent.

The meeting in Kalangadoo was quite interesting. They have a station that has been essentially unmanned for a considerable period of time. Again, these operational matters are matters for the commissioner. I have no argument there at all, except of course that before the election the people of Kalangadoo were led to believe that that police station would be reopened, that it would be restaffed and that there would be police officers stationed there, living in Kalangadoo. We all know the importance of country policing. We all know the importance of a country police officer, particularly those of us from the regions.

We are constantly told that regions matter to those opposite, but it is fair to say that the people of Kalangadoo are bitterly disappointed with the Liberal government. I met a very pleasant representative of the member for MacKillop down there. I said at the time that I did not blame the member for MacKillop. He was, in a sense, the victim of some hasty promises by superiors in his party when he was trying to get elected. I will have more to say on the matter soon. I will be writing to the minister and the commissioner to let them know exactly what I heard in Kalangadoo and the surrounding districts.