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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-02-23 Daily Xml
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POLICE RESOURCING

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (15:37): I rise this afternoon to 'Wright' a wrong. I rise because an apparent injustice has been done and lives are potentially at risk. I rise because the opposition suspects that the government has found a goat to scape while ignoring the principle and convention of a minister accepting responsibility.

I speak of the government's response to the events of 11 September last year when a 63-year-old woman who lived alone in Callington was allegedly murdered. Just after midnight she phoned police saying that rocks had been thrown at her home by a group of youths. No patrol car was dispatched.

Just three days later, on the next parliamentary sitting day following opposition pressure, then police minister, the Hon. Michael Wright, announced an inquiry, but not an independent inquiry: an internal investigation. The minister then did something quite extraordinary. He pre-empted the findings of his own inquiry. He said that it was a call centre operator's fault that no patrol car had been sent out to the victim's house. This was before any evidence had even been heard and before any witnesses had been called.

It is like saying that the reason the war was lost was the incompetence of some lowly private or corporal while giving the blundering drunken general a fourth star and a medal. He ruled out resourcing, even though we all know, and South Australia knows, that resourcing goes to the heart of police operations. In today's South Australia, under this incompetent government, there are simply no patrols that can get to even high priority crime scenes quickly enough. Under this government, priorities for police attendance have been downgraded from an A to a B classification—

The Hon. P. Holloway interjecting:

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins): I look forward to the Hon. Mr Holloway's first matters of interest speech.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: —because of the very same resourcing factor that the police minister denies: there are no free patrols.

In December 2007, a call came about a huge brawl, possibly gang-related, in Parafield Gardens. People in the street were woken up by sounds of fighting and screaming. They called the police, but no patrols were immediately available. It was only after an ambulance at the scene contacted police to say that there had been a stabbing and the victim may not survive that the police arrived. The man died from his wounds.

The police minister yesterday referred to what happened in Callington as 'an incident'. This is a death, an apparent murder. A 63-year-old woman calls the police, the police do not come and then she is later found by her brother dead in her home. To describe this as 'an incident' devalues the minister and the parliament. It is a scandal. Then we have an inquiry conducted not in the open, so we can hear the evidence, but in secret, away from the eyes and ears of ordinary South Australians—men, women and families who want to feel safe in their home whatever the time of day or night.

Not only is this inquiry conducted in secret but the results are also secret. In a statement yesterday, the police minister made the spurious claim that the inquiry—which was now called a review—had been wide ranging. And guess what? It ruled out resourcing; it blamed the operator, the person who took the victim's call—the minister's scapegoat. The minister claims that the call was not handled in accordance with call centre standard operating procedures and that the patrol should have been dispatched in response to the woman's call. Where is the ministerial accountability? Where is the ministerial responsibility? It has gone. It has left the building. It has fled the scene of the crime.

Let's go back to September, the days after the woman was found dead. The police minister claimed, without even hearing any evidence, that the call centre operator made an error of judgement by not referring the police incident report—that is, the woman's call to the communications centre—for a follow-up patrol. The call-taker's colleagues said that they followed the procedure to the letter, because the offenders had left the scene and there was no provision in the operating procedures for a patrol to be sent.

If the government and Mr Hyde are correct, and it was indeed human error, why would the minister admit yesterday that he will amend the General Orders, recommendation 1 of the report, and also amend the call centre standard operating procedures, which is the report's second recommendation? It simply does not make sense. Does this government have something to hide? Yes. It is hiding its moral judgement, it is hiding the truth. And it is on a hiding to nothing.

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