David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to address the House about an issue which is incredibly important for the community of Wakefield, and that is the issue of crime. Crime takes many forms, from minor crime and break-ins through to violent crime. Much crime is associated with drugs. I get frequent feedback from people who want to know what can be done as a community and what government can do. One of the things that has been very encouraging in Wakefield is that the councils and I have been able to establish a very good working relationship to address a number of these issues.

One of the bits of feedback I frequently get from people in the community is that they would like to see more things for young people to do. They have concerns that young people are often left after school or on weekends with few activities to entertain or occupy them or to help them develop constructive habits. The fear is that some of them get involved in gang activity and that leads to involvement in drugs and crime and other undesirable outcomes.

The City of Playford have worked with us through the National Community Crime Prevention Program to obtain funding. Under the current round, they have received a grant of $479,550 under the National Crime Prevention Program, which is aimed at diverting antisocial behaviour of young people and providing a range of activities that these people can become involved in. This is the third such program that the Community Crime Prevention Program has funded in Wakefield over the last three years. It has very successfully put in place programs to get young people involved in something constructive. We have also been able to work with a number of community groups, and this has been very positive, with smaller grants of up to $5,000 to look at things like security doors, security bars and security lighting for sporting clubs and other buildings, as well as closed-circuit TV systems at the very local level.

Probably the most significant development, which I am very happy to report to the House tonight, is a response to the danger factor that is presented by young people and some older people riding unregistered trail bikes and ‘monkey bikes’ or minibikes in reserves, on streets and throughout the suburbs. This is a problem to such an extent that I had an email the other day from a family in Smithfield Plains who said that they had not had an hour’s sleep because of people racing up and down the pathway in a reserve outside their home throughout the night and into the morning.

There is a real problem for the police in that they get reports throughout a whole range of areas: Craigmore and up in the hills face where there are some reserves, in Salisbury and throughout parts of Elizabeth and the city of Playford. Generally speaking, by the time the police get there the people who are committing the crime have moved on or, even if the police do arrive and see them, the police recognise that it is unsafe for them to chase these young people to try to apprehend them.

We have had a number of meetings and we have worked out that the key missing element—the failure mode, if you like—in this whole situation is evidence that the councils and the police can use to prosecute the people or, in some cases, confiscate the motorbikes or monkey bikes that are used in these incidents. Under the National Community Crime Prevention Program, I have worked with the City of Salisbury and the City of Playford, along with SAPOL. The City of Salisbury has taken the lead role. I thank Pat Trimboli, who has ended up being the point of contact, and Colin Pitman and Leigh Hall from the City of Playford. We have put in an application under the Community Crime Prevention Program and have been granted $200,000 to purchase a CCTV system which is mobile and will be able to be used at a number of known hotspots and a number of known entry points into reserves. This will mean that we can gain evidence, particularly by recording the facial features and identifying the people concerned, and then we can go to the high schools or other places where the young people are known to get names and identities so that the councils and the police can taken action.

I welcome this partnership in Wakefield, which has meant that together we will be able to address something that is of very significant community concern. It will be for the benefit of the young people involved and also the community in the electorate of Wakefield, which I am privileged to represent in this place.