NSW election promises fewer violent criminals, drugs, paedophiles and guns. Add a pinch of salt
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Version 0 of 1. Poles and wires are not the only game in the NSW election, significant as they are in bolstering a raft of infrastructure promises so numerous and dazzling that you’d have to be a true believer to think they will all see the light of day. Tucked away, almost out of sight, are the packages and promises in the law and justice realm – “Lawn Order” issues that usually hog the limelight in state political campaigns. Again, a large pinch of salt is required to think that if any or all of them were implemented there’d a fewer violent criminals, drugs, firearms and paedophiles in our midst. So which off-the-peg policy will you buy? If you were worried about deranged people afflicted by ice, then the Liberals have a cupboard full of measure to put users and peddlers behind bars. Deputy premier Troy Grant, a former country copper, said that these measures, “will put our boot on the throat of ice peddlers ...” Related: NSW election: Liberals target ice users while Labor focuses on police numbers Dr Alex Wodak from the Australian Drug law Reform Association was not impressed. He said the policy was “nonsense on stilts ... this is all window dressing”. However, the Coalition is putting $7m into treatment clinics in the ice belts – the Illawarra, the mid-north coast and western Sydney – and $4m into combatting addiction. This is a tiny drop in the bucket for what is a very nasty problem. Labor’s Luke Foley is taking a more holistic approach and has promises a “twenty-first century drugs summit”, which is a follow-up to his February ice “roundtable”. The NSW opposition leader would also like to get his boot on some throats and has promised an additional 480 new recruits to the police force. Again, reach for the salt. The Liberals have promised 310 more police, but they promised 209 in 2012 and only delivered 129. So is the Coalition just pledging to make up the difference (191) or are they really shooting for 310 extra officers? It’s hard to know. The election had also dragged domestic violence out from behind closed doors. The Coalition wants a domestic violence register modelled on the UK’s Clare’s law, which allows women to see if their partners have a history of violence. A Baird government will also appoint a new minister for prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault. Supposedly, this minister will provide a bit of focus by filching responsibility for a range of programs across various portfolios. For Labor, the promise is three specialised domestic violence and sexual assault courts in the main centres – Sydney, the Hunter and the Illawarra. It’s also important for political parties to pander to the shock jocks whose main soft-on-crime fulminators are directed at the need to lock-em-up-longer. The Coalition shows how well it can nibble out of the hand of commercial radio demagogues. It says it will increase the maximum penalty for sexual intercourse with a child under 10 from 25 years to life. Here, life must mean real life. There’ll be increased standard non-parole periods for various firearm offences plus new measures to deal with people who haven’t offended, but might – crime prevention orders, restricting phone or bank accounts, even restricting the sorts of printers people might own. Police minister Stuart Ayres declared, “Gun crime has substantially reduced on the Liberals’ and Nationals’ watch and we will continue a zero tolerance approach ...” People who live in south-west Sydney, and were having their neighbourhoods shot up just about every night under premier O’Farrell, must have relished this “zero tolerance approach”. Fortunately, the government has reopened an old jail to cope with the extra inmates it is anxious to create, but what of the courts and the legal system that has to handle the output from the renewed toughness towards offenders? Legal aid was already bursting at the seams when the Commonwealth cut its contribution to its budget by $25.5m. Indigenous legal aid and community legal centres despaired and foreshadowed limited services and closures. The board of NSW Legal Aid said earlier this year that it would have to cancel or postpone trials of people charged with Commonwealth offences: people trafficking, child pornography, drug importation and terrorism. In February, the federal government responded by stumping up $5.2m to fund some of these cases – nationwide. This month the complaints about the $25.5m cuts to legal assistance reached a crescendo and, would you believe it, two days out from the state election, attorney general Brandis announced a magnificent somersault, with pike? The $25.5m over two years has been restored and guaranteed to June 30, 2017. While the state politicians have had their backs turned on the trail, the bureaucrats have been up to some monkey business. It’s emerged that the venerable and valuable NSW Law Reform Commission is to be defenestrated. It will lose its dedicated staff, who now will come from the department of justice. There is no full-time chairman of the commission and there hasn’t been for over a year. Nor has there been a full-time commissioner for a similar period, or any new references. Any research staff or project officers will now be responsible to the department, not to an independent law reform commission, which has done excellent work on sentencing, bail, offenders with mental health impairment and early guilty pleas. A fine legal institution has bit the dust, with barely a squeak. Happy voting. |