CRIME FIGHT IS PRIORITY
IF the State Government is maintaining pressure for cost cutting in the Police Service and, as sources allege, there may be bonuses for senior cops if savings are achieved, then they have learned nothing.
Fifteen months ago the Auditor-General handed down a scathing report that found crime data governance on the Gold Coast was “poor’’, with fudged crime figures making the situation look a lot better than it actually was. Such a move was foolish, since the real solution to tackling increasing crime rates would be to bring more police to the Gold Coast to meet the demand demonstrated by the real crime figures.
But we suspect having to fund a boost in personnel would not please this Government, despite Police Minister Mark Ryan’s oft-stated claim that if the Commissioner and his senior officers need resources, all they have to do is ask. He also maintains the line that budgeting and allocation of personnel are up to the Commissioner.
However police sources say the system works another way. The Government keeps a tight control of budget processes and police management have to find an “efficiency dividend’’ and return savings.
It’s little wonder then that the Government is feeling the heat this week over police budgets and staffing. The Bulletin has reported the Gold Coast has been shortchanged 88 cops – numbers have dropped 44 from 886 permanent officers in June 2016 down to 842, and there are also the missing 44 the Premier promised the Coast before the 2017 election.
The Opposition has branded cutbacks and broken promises “a big lie’’.
The past two years do not make pretty reading, with a tale of budget cuts, fewer personnel, fudged crime statistics, a crisis among senior officers including one facing charges and, if we were to go looking for signs of rot, three symptoms of a the wider problem. One involved State of Origin night in July last year when it was revealed there were no police on the beat in Surfers Paradise, despite the potential for celebrating fans to get out of control.
Another concerns water police numbers here – a microcosm of budget cuts and insufficient personnel across the board. Mr Ryan admitted this year there are 14 water police officers on the Coast, up just two from 12 in the year 2000, but the city has 32,000 recreational craft and 700 commercial vessels, and boat registrations here are increasing by more than 1000 a year. Then there is the GPS tracker fail. Despite the supposed ready availability of the devices for domestic violence thugs, there have been unacceptable delays in getting them here from Brisbane when needed. Mr Ryan has said timing is determined by the courts, but magistrates at the Gold Coast Domestic Violence Court have been told it takes seven days for them to be delivered.
The Bulletin supports efficient use of resources, but sees no good in the police service being run as though it must return a profit. If the Government sticks its hand out at the end of each financial year and expects senior police to have made savings from an already inadequate budget, that can only lead to personnel down the chain trying to take shortcuts. Police are there to seek, confront and control crime, not operate just to please whoever is in power.
WELL well well... Suddenly the sleeping giant has awakened.
Where have you been Main Beach? I commented on September 18 that the town plan was poorly conceived with regard to the development boundary between Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach.
Can you believe the plan allows for unlimited height restrictions on the northern side of the boundary and three-level restrictions on the south side?
Don’t talk me about density abuse Main Beach...
Yes Mermaid Beach will definitely know where the winter sun used to be. So what are we going to do about it? Do we fight suburb by suburb or do we present a united front?
In my Mermaid Beach opinion Ray Stevens (state) and Paul Taylor (local) should not feel comfortable about their political futures.
It’s our town, people. Stuff the town plan and the light rail zone. Let’s start again.
It’s time we let the bureaucrats know that we own this city.
WHETHER or not you agree with abortion being legalised in Queensland, Members of Parliament were given a conscience vote.
For the LNP to now come out and threaten to not endorse MPs who did not vote along party lines is a bad look.
A 70-year-old who has lived a full life who now has an incurable illness and in constant pain can’t end to their life and misery but people are allowed to end the life of an unborn child who has no say.
And people actually clapped at this decision. It's a strange world we live in.
I NEVER thought I would ever see the day when a terrified woman, desperate for protection from her violent partner, contacts the Premier for help, only to be told by Annastacia that there is nothing she can do.
What has happened to my home state of Queensland under years of hopeless Labor?
This type of negative response was unheard of under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen National Party.
Their criminal laws were so tough, that no man would have been foolish enough to commit a violent act on a woman or a child.
In our day, men respected women, they protected their wives and children, yet today all we read about is men bashing women and sexually abusing children.
During the Bjelke-Petersen years in office, the criminal laws were so tough, that this type of crime would have attracted an extremely long prison term.
No bail and suspended sentences existed like today’s weak courts.
Labor Governments over the years have been too gullible and introduced too many rights and protections for criminals.
This is why crime is out of control in Queensland, with youth crime now being worse.
In his rebuttal of Peter Campion (GCB 19/10), Dr Trevor Graham quotes “97+% of climate scientists” but fails to tell us who they are.
Two of his supporters are doubtless Tim Flannery, one-time Climate Commissioner, who forecast “walls of water eight storeys high”, flooding Torres Strait islands.
It never happened. Or Al Gore, who having failed to become US President, turned his attention to telling us it was “the most important spiritual and moral issued humankind has ever faced.” His blockbuster movie An Inconvenient Truth was found to contain nine major factual errors. By contrast, there is Climate
Change – the Facts 2017, where 22 contributors, nearly all of them scientists, rebut point by point the warmists’ cause.
The book is now in its second edition. Dr Graham should get a copy. It must be distressing for the climate evangelists to find that more people are waking up to a hoax and a fraud. P C WILSON, MIAMI
BY his own admission, T Graham (GCB, letters, 19/10) is not a climate scientist. But he is likely to be quite expert in his field. He probably trusts other scientists to be as expert as he is. Sadly, that is not so in climate science.
T Graham cites the NASA scientists who put men on the moon.
However, back on 10/04/2012, 49 former NASA moon scientists, engineers and astronauts wrote to NASA administrator Charles Bolden admonishing NASA for claiming man-made CO2 causes climate change while ignoring evidence it does not.
In fact, just this week, Apollo 17 moonwalker Dr Harrison Schmitt rejected the recent UN-IPCC climate report, saying: “The observations that we make as geologists… do not show any evidence that human beings are causing this.”
T Graham goes on to call me a climate “denier”.
“Denier” is the ultimate insult for anyone who’s done independent research on climate and comes to a different – and highly reasonable based on the evidence – conclusion. In using “denier”, Dr T is parroting the petty name calling of the left. Sad.