Debate resumed from an earlier hour.

The Hon. HELEN SHAM-HO [5.01]: Before the debate was interrupted for questions I was talking about tourism in Australia and criticising the Government for cutting the budget for this important industry. Not only are tourist centres in the main cities of New South Wales losing out under this budget, but because there has been no increased funding for grants to regional tourist associations there has been no encouragement for tourists to visit the regional areas of New South Wales. What enticement is there for tourists to travel thousands of miles when they are only aware of the beauty of one city? Would they not be more attracted to New South Wales if they knew that we had so much more to offer in our country areas as well as in Sydney? Regional New South Wales should be promoted to a greater extent but the Government has not had the vision to do so.

This lack of vision is disappointing, particularly in contrast with the former coalition Government's commitment to tourism. The coalition Government increased funding to Tourism New South Wales by more than 16 per cent last year. However, under the current Labor Government the overall funding to Tourism New South Wales has suffered a 4.9 per cent cut. The lack of new projects or initiatives shows the Government's lack of vision; it has failed to foresee the growing market for hosting conferences within the tourism industry and has therefore failed to allocate funding for vital expansion of the Sydney Convention Centre.

The difference between the two governments is clear. The coalition Government gave tourism top priority and the Hon. Virginia Chadwick was a very competent tourism Minister. Labor lacks the vision to understand the significance of our fastest growing industry and probably the only growth industry in New South Wales at this time. I call on the Government to reconsider the funding cuts to the tourism industry. I would like to see the Government
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recognise the significance of New South Wales's largest growth industry and make tourism a priority, particularly in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympic Games 2000; and also, of course, to answer Mr Rod McGeoch's criticism that the Premier and the Prime Minister have no vision in relation to the Olympics.

I conclude by saying that solving problems with short-term solutions in order to get them out of the way is not the key to good government; nor is ill-considered and rushed policy. Good government does not come from relying on a veneer of good policy to scrape through a four-year term. Once the community scratches at the surface it will realise what the Government is all about. Policy must be well thought out after thorough consultation with the community. We do not need policy on the run; there must be vision and permanent solutions to real problems. I call on the Government to live up to its promise and consult with the community. I am waiting for the Government to do better in the future.

The Hon. ELISABETH KIRKBY [5.05]: This is the fifteenth time I have spoken to a budget in this Chamber on behalf of the Australian Democrats. This year the task has been made particularly interesting because we are considering the first budget of this Treasurer and the first budget of a new Labor administration. The admirable first speeches made by the Hon. Patricia Staunton and the Hon. Janelle Saffin gave me great hope for the future of the Labor Party in New South Wales and I congratulate them both. They were meaningful speeches and they showed the calibre of the women in Australia's oldest party. I hope that during their time in this House they manage to hold to the values and integrity implicit in their first speeches, and that they are not misled by the behaviour of their male colleagues, particularly those who currently lead their party at the Federal level.

I also congratulate the Hon. I. Cohen, the Hon. A. G. Corbett, the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn and the Hon. M. R. Kersten. My very useful desk calendar reminded me of the aphorism: history is a mirror of human needs which inflames and inspires. The thinking in the Labor Party today, if we believe it is reflected in the statements of a Keating, a Beazley or a Carr, seems to be designed to inflame. Their language is intemperate; their understanding of what is happening in Australia to the ordinary people who voted for us and who are affected every day by our activities in this House, by the legislation we pass and by the money allocated to their needs, is limited. To be a smart politician in the Labor Party today at a Federal level, apparently it is necessary to describe the people who lead financial institutions as donkeys. To put down one's political opponents in another place it is now fashionable to comment on whether or not they - in this case she - are taking hormones. It is not funny; it is not clever; it demeans Parliament; and it hurts the people we are all elected to serve.

During the winter recess I went to England and Scotland on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association study tour. Because of my work on the Standing Committee on Social Issues, particularly the reference on sexual violence, I made the subjects of my trip twofold: the treatment of sexual offenders in prisons and the conditions in women's prisons, and also the provision of independent accommodation for the intellectually and physically disabled. The tour was organised for me by the Office of the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly and by the Clerk's very able administrative assistant, Patricia Broderick. I take this opportunity to publicly express my gratitude to them and also to Liz Hill and her staff in the office of the New South Wales Government in London.

In England I visited Maidstone gaol and the women's prison at Cookham Wood, outside Rochester. In Scotland I visited the women's prison at Cornton Vale, outside Stirling and the male Allermuir unit in Edinburgh. The centres for people with disabilities were in Devon, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and by telephone hook-up I gained information about accommodation and programs in Manchester and Birmingham. Since my return I have had many opportunities to reflect on the approach being adopted in Britain under a Conservative Government with an economic rationalist agenda and on the approach adopted in this budget by a Labor Government with an economic rationalist agenda.

We are currently grappling with legislation designed to impose mandatory sentences for serious drug offences; the Mr Bigs and other criminals who are considered highly dangerous. We have a new Minister for Corrective Services who is desperately trying to improve our prison system on a less than adequate budget. It costs the taxpayer a great deal of money to keep people in gaol, and currently our gaols in New South Wales are full to capacity. Yet there is totally inadequate funding for the programs that would assist those incarcerated to rehabilitate themselves. There is no program for sexual offenders in any gaol in New South Wales that matches the program I saw in Maidstone gaol. Yet our judges are being exhorted to get tough, particularly with drug offenders, to encourage harsher sentence and thus to keep the community safe.

Maidstone is not a modern gaol. Physically it has probably changed very little since the days of Dickens. So the money there is not being spent on new or modern gaol premises; it is being spent on programs to assist prisoners to come to terms with their crimes. I do not like visiting cell blocks that are three storeys high, meshed and barred, with heavy padlocked steel doors. But it was interesting and heartening to meet the governor of Maidstone gaol and the officers who run the sexual offenders program, and to discover that no prison officers in British gaols are armed. There are no perimeter guards. Indeed, no prison officer is permitted to use a firearm. The governor cannot issue a firearm. Firearms can only be used on the order of the Minister, and then they are issued to the tactical response division of the police, who come in if necessary to quell any uprising. There are even strict protocols governing the use of tear gas and water canon. If there is a serious disturbance in a gaol the police are called in to restore order. Nor are sex
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offenders regarded as the most dangerous criminals. How could they be, when Britain's gaols still hold terrorists who have been sentenced to life or to long terms of imprisonment for bombings and assassinations that have marked the centuries-long struggle in Ireland?

The sexual offenders program in Maidstone has two strands. The first is a work program. Prisoners who do not accept work in one of the prison workshops lose their privileges. Work or a full-time study program is obligatory. A prisoner can refuse to work, but that will mean fewer visits, loss of leisure activities and restricted buy-ups. Unfortunately, work is often not available in New South Wales gaols for prisoners who want it, and the opportunity for prisoners to study is very limited because of cut-backs in funding for TAFE teachers. That is a great tragedy, in light of the splendid woodwork, painting, pottery and sculpture on display in the Parliament's fountain court last week. The work we were privileged to see last week - I bought some of the exhibits, as did other honourable members - was of a very high standard. For that reason alone the prison officers in charge of those programs must be congratulated. Unfortunately, not all prisoners who wish to join those programs are able to do so.

In Maidstone the treatment program for sexual offenders is run by prison officers, both men and women, by psychologists and also by parole officers. Parole officers are integrated into the prison program because they have to supervise prisoners on day release. Supervision by a parole officer is essential after a prisoner is released at the completion of his or her sentence. Therapy groups similar to those run by Alcoholics Anonymous or Gamblers Anonymous are part of the post-release program. The program is intensive because it takes time to break down the denial which is common among sex offenders. The subsequent emotional and in some cases physical crisis affects both the prisoner and the prison officers. Indeed, the prison officers I met told me that after that breakdown it sometimes takes up to two weeks for a prisoner to recover his emotional stability, and this of course has a profound effect on the prison officers taking care of them.

It is sometimes said that a sex offender can never be cured. However, the belief in Maidstone is that offenders can learn to control their behaviour, and there are techniques they can learn to control their aggression and lack of control. The belief is that if only ten men come of that program able to control their behaviour, there will be far greater safety for women in the community to which they return. There will be less danger of sexual violence, particularly in the home. When I visited Maidstone I was informed that the majority of sex offenders in the Maidstone unit were convicted of abuse of family members. It was not a fear of stranger danger for women and children but the unwanted sexual abuse of children in the family home by fathers, uncles and cousins, the very relatives children should be able to trust. No-one I met in England believed that treatment of sex offenders was easy.

When I visited the Maudesley Hospital in London and talked with Dr Peter Misch and his fellow researcher Dr Joanna Pearce, they talked about post-trial diversion for juvenile sex offenders under supervision. This form of supervision is designed to approach the whole life of the offender and not just the offence alone, and it lasts for three years. The young offenders are taken out of their homes and put into a foster home. Initially they undergo a 12-week group therapy, conjointly with their foster carers. The community worker under that system of juvenile justice works not only with the perpetrator but also with the school and with the family. This program was for juvenile offenders only, in contrast to the sex offenders program in Maidstone which lasts 38 weeks and in which groups of eight to 10 offenders take part in group therapy.

Under the British Criminal Justice Act 1991, if the offender is sentenced to less than four years imprisonment, half of that sentence is served in gaol and half in the community on a conditional licence as therapy continues. If the sentence imposed by the court is more than four years imprisonment there is no automatic remission and home leave will be granted only after half the sentence has been served. You can imagine how serious a deprivation this is for offenders receiving sentences of 10, 12 or 16 years. The Cookham Wood women's prison at Rochester is a modern prison, but although the accommodation was less dickensian, the regime was very tough. There were 126 inmates, 15 of whom were on life sentences for murder. There were 53 prisoners convicted of drug offences. Mandatory drug testing for all prisoners was to be introduced in November, so I assuming that it has been introduced by this time. As in Australia, 50 per cent of the inmates were non-Anglo Saxon. The majority were African, as the major source of drugs in the United Kingdom is Nigeria.

The women that I met were not Mrs Bigs; they were mainly young, and 25 per cent of them were addicted to prescribed drugs, both hypnotic and anti-depressant. I left Cookham Wood with mixed feelings, particularly as in the confinement unit there was a time-out cell that was worse than anything I had seen in Australia. My colleagues the Hon. Ann Symonds and the Hon. Jennifer Gardiner will understand what I mean when I make that comparison because together we visited a similar unit in Mulawa. So it was a relief later to visit the women's prison at Cornton Vale outside Stirling, where the atmosphere was totally different. In the mother-and-baby unit, the mother had a normal bedroom, not a cell. The room was decorated with mobiles, baby posters and flowered curtains. In fact, it was very similar to a nursery in the average middle-class home. The baby in this case was 15 months old, very lively and very cheerful. It was probably being spoilt rotten by the inmates and staff alike.

The mother was quite young. I was informed she was a recidivist and that her background was not particularly conducive to successful rehabilitation. Her family's background in crime was also bad. But
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at least, although she was serving her time in gaol, she was not denied her baby as well as her liberty. The regime at Cornton Vale is the most advanced I have seen, but still there was no program to assist women with a drug habit to break their addiction, such as there is at the Allermuir unit, the drug reduction unit for male prisoners in Edinburgh. The unit accepts for its program both remand prisoners and convicted prisoners. Admission to the program is voluntary, and the aim is to return prisoners to the community drug free. The prisoners spend their first 14 days in the unit living in the bottom wing of the prison hospital, which is adjacent to the unit. There they attend classes and also receive medication. I was informed that the majority of prisoners currently in the unit are addicted to valium by injection and therefore this period spent under medical supervision is essential.

I was told that although it is possible to come off a heroin addiction cold turkey it is not possible to stop using hypnotics or tranquillisers that way. I must point out that the drug reduction program is not only a methadone program. Drugs normally used, as well as methadone, include diazepam, temazepam and dihydrocodeine. These drugs are prescribed by the medical officers and the prisoner is kept under constant supervision for the first 14 days of the program. Another important fact I learnt at Allermuir was that it was usual to strip search staff as well as prisoners. Also the dogs used by prison officers were not german shepherds, which are commonly used in New South Wales, but springer spaniels. They are expert at detecting drugs but not as menacing as german shepherds and therefore they cannot be used to control, threaten or harass prisoners.

Honourable members may be asking why I have raised all of these matters in my speech on the 1995 budget, and the answer is simple: we are currently imprisoning more and more people for drug offences. Most are addicts, and the crimes they committed were usually to enable them to feed their habit. What is the use of incarcerating persons convicted of sex or drug offences for lengthy gaol terms if we have no adequate programs in place to rehabilitate them? Page 295 of volume 1 of Budget Paper No. 3 shows that $1.188 million has been made available for the national campaign against drug abuse. The allocation has not even been increased to keep pace with inflation. No money is budgeted to continue the drug and alcohol program for Aboriginal inmates. I asked questions about this at the estimates committees. There has not even been an increase from the Federal money allocated for the purpose. Staffing for the full-time special needs program participants has increased by only 10 for 1995-96.

The program objective may state that the aim is "to deliver developmental programs and specialised care services that provide an opportunity for inmates to successfully return to the community"; yet the allotment of staff and money does not match the rhetoric. Nor does it appear that the Government is committed to stage two of the Emu Plains correctional centre for women. The Government has increased funding for corrective services by 2.5 per cent to $415 million, but of course that money is not being spent on vital rehabilitation programs, nor is it keeping pace with inflation. It is not sufficient to increase funding by 2.5 per cent when inflation is now running at nearly 5 per cent. Yet there is a continuing call to the Government for longer sentences, for judges to get tough on criminals, and for the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal against sentences that the popular press has deemed to be too lenient.

The Government has responded by introducing draconian legislation such as that providing for mandatory sentencing. Yet at the same time the Government has not allocated funding to provide for rehabilitation programs similar to those I saw in England and Scotland. We are to continue to imprison drug offenders, yet we offer them very little help to overcome their addiction. Before government members insist that we have a methadone program in our gaols I must emphasise that in Scotland the methadone program is aimed at drug reduction; the aim is to return prisoners to the community drug free. In New South Wales, the corrective services health officers admit that they run a maintenance program of methadone tailored to the individual treatment needs of each inmate. That claim is in the mission statement. Yet we are very well aware - or should be - that some prisoners are still leaving prison with debts of thousands of dollars for heroin that they have been able to buy and use inside our gaols.

I do not deny that our methadone maintenance program is better than nothing. Obviously it minimises the spread of infectious diseases secondary to intravenous drug use. I do not mean only HIV-AIDS; there is also the very great danger of the transmission of hepatitis C, and the program lessens the need for some addicts to return to heroin. But I simply wish that we were going that one step further and putting in place a true drug-reduction program to assist people who have been gaoled for drug offences to return to the community drug free. I take this opportunity to place on the record the problems that are still facing the Koori community. The Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee believes that young Kooris are still being treated harshly by police, prisons and the Children's Courts.

A recent media release put out by the committee gives the example of Brooke, who had been wrongfully arrested of stealing. Brooke is a young Aboriginal woman. At the police station, after being harassed on account of her aboriginality, she was assaulted by five police officers. Norman is a juvenile who was placed in an adult remand centre in the Australian Capital Territory. He was there for two months because he could not be placed or transferred into a juvenile centre at Wagga Wagga. Norman was kept in the worst area of the remand centre, with adult prisoners facing much more serious charges than he was. Officers apparently are known in the Australian Capital Territory for their racism and they have reportedly threatened Norman.

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Another young man received rough treatment by being locked in a Dubbo police cell for four nights longer than police regulations allow. He was very distressed, as was his family, considering the poor conditions of the cells - a concrete slab for a bed, a sink, toilet and shower, almost no direct sunlight and a tiny exercise yard measuring two metres by five metres. These examples of abuse clearly show that the custodial systems are not serious enough about implementing the recommendations of the royal commission. I was delighted to hear the Minister for Community Services say today that the remand centre at Dubbo is to be increased from six beds to 30 beds. I hope there will not be a recurrence of cases like that of the young man who was locked in the police cell for far longer than he should have been.

In some of the gaols I visited in England the cells had no shower or toilet facilities, as there are in most gaols in New South Wales. In Rochester and Maidstone there was still the slop-out system which dates back to the last century. Although money may be spent in programs, cell accommodation is being upgraded very slowly. In Exeter, Glasgow and Edinburgh I visited centres established for respite care and long-term supported accommodation for the physically and intellectually disabled. In Exeter I was taken to John Hannan House, a block of self-contained units where disabled adults live independently. The majority are in single units with 24-hour supervision. Assistance with domestic chores and shopping was provided through a system similar to Home and Community Care. Many of the young adults living there also attend a skills training centre, where they are taught to use computers, whatever the severity of their disability, so they can take their place in the work force.

I saw some advanced computer programs that were being operated by people who could only use a computer with a chin pad on either side of the chin. They were able to move the cursor even though they had no control over their arms, hands or lower limbs. It was also possible in some cases, with an advanced computer technique, for them to operate a modem which gave voice simulation to what they were putting into the computers. This gave them greater flexibility and the ability to live in a more independent manner. I visited a young man in John Hannan House who had a helper similar to those who are employed by HACC.

Unfortunately, funding was being cut back - also similar to HACC - and people living in the units were asked not to gossip with their domestic helpers because the more time they spent on gossip the less time there would be to clean the units. For many of them, this was a vital part of their life. They wanted to be able to communicate with those who assisted them with their personal toilet and the cleaning of their units, otherwise their communication with the outside world was limited. I do not know if such instructions have yet been issued in New South Wales, but because of the cutback in funding to HACC, I am afraid they soon will be.

Budget Paper No. 3, Volume 1, page 261 shows that general housework hours have been decreasing year by year - 53 per cent in 1992-93, 49.5 per cent in 1993-94, and 46.8 per cent in 1994-95. The average number of households serviced per month has also decreased - 44.2 per cent in 1992-93, 41.4 per cent in 1993-94 and 39.8 per cent in 1994-95. Output estimates for 1995-96 are not yet available. This is due to yet another review of HACC objectives and priorities. All honourable members should be aware that there have now been eight formal reviews of the HACC program in addition to four reviews outside but linked to the HACC program. There have also been three formal pilot programs and countless other program changes.

Frances Parker, chairperson of the HACC State Advisory Committee, said at the HACC conference last September - a conference I attended - "is this reform or review chaos?" I believe it is review chaos, because every time questions are asked of a relevant Minister either at a State or Federal level, as my colleague Senator Meg Lees has been doing, the answer is, "the program is being reviewed". How many more reviews does any government want either at a State or Federal level? In its submission on the budget the New South Wales Council of Social Service asserted:

Labor has broken yet another pre-election promise, savagely squeezing funds for the Home and Community Care Program.

The Budget gives existing HACC services an increase this year of just 0.9% - a substantial cut in real terms.

It won't even pay July's 1% increase in superannuation. There is just 2% available . . .

How can this be said to be available for new services? As I said before, inflation is now running at 5 per cent. The submission continued:

Compare this to "Labor's Plans for Older People", released in March, which promised, "Labor will increase State funding in real terms for the Home and Community Care Program."

According to this year's budget that promise has not been kept. In Edinburgh I spent time with Dr Ros Lyall, who is a consultant psychiatrist at the Gogarburn Hospital. This hospital was established for people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. It is similar to the hospital at Gladesville and, like Gladesville, it is being progressively closed down and residents are being moved into supported accommodation in the community. To date, 200 people have been accommodated in Edinburgh into a mix of housing. Some houses were bought on the open market and others are part of the existing public housing stock, known in Scotland and the United Kingdom as council housing. No more than eight people will be considered in any one residence, but every person discharged from Gogarburn will need 24-hour care.

I noticed with a certain amount of cynicism that this restructuring means that the necessary funding will not be transferred from the National Health Service to the local government authority because
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under the Scottish legislation community care has to match National Health Service care. Local governments have no option but to comply. My visit to all these centres only confirmed my view that there will never be any saving of money through transferring people previously looked after in what were known as institutions.

It will cost the Government of whatever political persuasion far more for them to be looked after in group homes than in hospital, even though the salary of carers in Scotland is very low - they are paid £4.21 per hour. At today's rate of exchange this would be around $9 an hour. In Glasgow I visited homes for family-based respite care for young people with profound learning difficulties. The homes that I visited were run by the Scottish Association for Family Based Respite Care, known as Shared Care Scotland. The carers I met were part of an organisation known as Crossroads (Scotland) Care Attendant Schemes, a voluntary organisation providing support to carers in the community. The leaflet distributed describing services asks these questions: "Do you know the stress of looking after someone at home 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Do you know of someone who finds that the strain of constant caring results in both emotional and physical exhaustion?"

The experience of meeting parents, carers and in some cases the cared for, who were intellectually and physically disabled of all ages, was moving and distressing. I was taken to many places, some where the residents needed two carers. It was necessary for two carers to lift one severely disabled child who had to be fed through a tube and needed constant changes of position to prevent pressure sores. This unit housed six severely disabled young people and 12 carers. The centre was in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital but the rooms were decorated with bright and cheerful colours. The sitting room might have been the sitting room of any large home, with comfortable furniture, television, compact disc player, unlike the common sitting room at the Farm House Trust establishment outside Exeter, which I found very depressing. In this establishment the bedrooms were very homelike because residents were able to bring in their own pictures, curtains, family photographs, television, CD players and other personal possessions. This centre also had an excellent occupational therapy studio where the residents were making jewellery, doing weaving, stitching tapestry and making jackets from hand-woven material.

Some of the residents in that particular Farm House Trust establishment were also going into the nearest town, a small town outside Exeter, and working there but returning to the establishment at night. They were still not able to live totally independently. In fact, I did not visit one centre where the residents were totally independent. If they lived in a block of apartments, the block was under constant supervision. What distressed me most about John Hannan House in Exeter was the fact that as I was taken through, the supervisor on duty locked every door behind us and unlocked every door in front of us. If they lived in the Farm Trust village that I visited, they ate in a communal dining hall and the centre was staffed 24 hours a day. In the respite care houses outside Glasgow I met a group of parents and none of the residents lived in an unsupervised house.

I had the very sad experience of meeting for morning tea with a group of parents in the living room of one of these houses, including a woman in her middle sixties or perhaps older, who had a developmentally disabled son in his late forties. That disabled adult is totally unable to cope without constant supervision. The mother said that the respite care where her son can go once every two or three weeks gives her two days when she is not personally on duty. She said, "I often lie in bed at night and wonder what would happen if I were to die in the night? I wonder what would happen if I got a life-threatening disease and knew that my time was limited." She said, "I have decided that if that happens and I know I have a life-threatening disease, I will assist my child's death first." She looked around at the other parents in the room, looked at me and said, "I have never said that to anybody before but it is really what I feel." The only people in the room were women and we were all in tears because she suddenly felt it was necessary to make such a statement.

I realise now that the Minister for Community Services, Minister for Aged Services, and Minister for Disability Services has freed up the $50 million for supported accommodation that had been locked up by the previous administration since 1988. However, I find it very strange that after seven years only $50 million is available to the Minister. I would have thought that $50 million deposited in the Treasury for seven years should have earned a considerable amount of interest and I would have thought that interest could have been added to the capital sum that the Minister has now received. I am sure it did earn interest, but of course the money is not available to the Minister for Community Services, at least not as far as can be ascertained from the budget papers. I realise also that the Minister is now under greater pressure than he ever was before the election because of deficiencies that he has discovered in some of the institutions in New South Wales. He has already closed one, and I have been campaigning for three years with the Minister and former Ministers for the closure of another institution outside Cooranbong.

In recent weeks problems have arisen at Peat Island also. However, today I received another letter, which was also sent to other members of Parliament, by one of the parents of a person living on Peat Island. A few days ago I asked the Minister a question about what was going to happen at Peat Island and I asked him if it was correct that one nurse was responsible for 28 people. Today I received a letter from the parent of one of those people living at Peat Island. That letter read in part:

The Minister states that he finds the statement that one nurse is responsible for 28 people incredible. That does not make it untrue. Parents can verify that the Hon. Liz Kirkby has not been misinformed.

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The Minister lists 7 vacancies at Peat Island Centre. Six of those positions have a direct bearing on the quality of service given to residents and the seventh has an indirect bearing.

The Minister says he is advised that nursing vacancies are filled by casual staff. Reliance on casual staff is not of benefit to the residents and has long been a matter of concern to parents.

The Minister appears to have been misinformed.

Using casual staff to care for severely disabled people is not the answer because the rapport between the severely disabled, particularly the intellectually disabled, and their carers is essential if they are going to be able to leave what we all know as an old-time institution. I had an example of that when I visited another home outside Glasgow which housed about seven intellectually disabled young people, including one who behaved in what is now described by social workers as a challenging manner. This was a young man of about 15 years of age, heavily built and obviously physically quite strong. His affliction meant that he walked about making very strange sounds indeed and attempted to attack either by way of scratching or biting people around him. He came into the room where I was sitting talking to the supervisor. He came over to me and attempted to scratch me. Naturally, his carer was with him and he was led away. That is the sort of challenging behaviour that carers must be aware of, and they must learn how to handle it. It is not easy. I do not think that it is the sort of job that can be undertaken by casual staff who have no training in the area.

This year's budget papers were the most confusing that I have seen for many years. It was nearly impossible to discover the detail for expenditure, and I do not believe that this happened by accident. It is so much easier for the Government to make glowing, broad-brush statements and then to obfuscate the detail to make it impossible to check whether its statements are grossly exaggerated or reasonably accurate. But there is absolutely no doubt that the 1995 Egan budget does not keep pace with inflation, which is estimated to be at nearly 5 per cent. Spending in several key areas has been reduced in real terms and there will be cuts in home and community care, supported accommodation, educational programs in gaols, and crisis accommodation, particularly refuges and drop-in centres. The New South Wales Council for Social Service stated:

There are some small but targeted funding increases to many programs across human services agencies in the Budget and NCOSS welcomes these.

But overall the Budget does little to tackle the wide scale social disadvantage we see in NSW, with 32,000 child abuse notifications each year, 81,000 households on public housing waiting lists, huge levels of unmet community care need for the frail aged and people with disabilities, the appalling health problems faced by Aboriginal people, the pressure on educational resources and quality and the continuing drought impacts on farming communities.

People who live in Sydney may think that, because there has been heavy rain over the past two weeks, and for the last week all over the State, that means that the drought has broken. It may also mean that many farmers who were hoping to get a bumper crop of wheat and other crops this year may be denied that source of income because the rain is putting our harvest at risk. The NCOSS article continued:

The Government must develop clear social objectives and transparent priorities.

There is little that is transparent in this budget, as I learnt during the estimate committee hearings. Often, when I referred to a line item in a departmental budget the Minister would reply, "I did not prepare these figures," or, "They are wrong." The Minister then referred the questioner - it was not always me but it frequently was - to a broad-brush statement in Budget Paper No. 2, Budget Information. There are discrepancies between the detailed estimates broken down department by department and the ministerial overview in Budget Paper No. 2. Of course, it is impossible for people like myself to ascertain which is correct, particularly when the Minister under question simply says "These figures are wrong. You can't depend on them." If the Minister's overview is correct, why is that not reflected in the detailed breakdown? If the line item breakdown is incorrect, who is responsible - Treasury, the Minister's departmental advisers or the financial controllers of each department? I should like the Treasurer to address those questions in his reply to the budget debate.

We should remember that 1997 has been designated by the United Nations as the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. Of course, there are many other countries represented at the United Nations where poverty is endemic, where people are starving and homeless in a way that we cannot possibly contemplate. But Australia is a rich nation. It has a small population. Surely it has the potential to be able to solve the problems that we face. Let me repeat: in New South Wales there are 32,000 child abuse notifications each year, 81,000 households on the public housing waiting list, appalling health problems faced by Aboriginal people and huge levels of unmet community care for the frail aged and people with disabilities.

It is a matter of regret that the budget did not make these issues a priority. In particular, the Government scrapped two programs for the young unemployed with the axing of Get Started and Workplace. These programs were phased out, with the Government saying that jobs are a Commonwealth responsibility. I dispute that statement. Providing employment is a community responsibility. These programs were essential for school leavers and all those young people who do not fit into Commonwealth programs - and there are many of them. If young people leave school and are unable to find employment, they can drift into a cycle of long-term unemployment, and their self-esteem can be permanently damaged. I am not making this statement out of ignorance or prejudice.

The statement is confirmed by NCOSS, the Sydney City Mission, the Australian Services Union, the National SkillShare Association and the Youth Action and Policy Association. I beg the Treasurer to
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reconsider his decision on these programs. Surely if the Treasurer can fund $344 million to build new showgrounds at Homebush and if he can fund the changes to the showground to meet the needs of Foxtel and Mr Murdoch, surely he can find the money for the get started and workplace programs. I believe that Get Started and Workplace should be his priority, and I believe that he will rue the day if they are not.

The Hon. J. S. TINGLE [5.57]: Obviously I shall speak to the budget, although perhaps I should not do so because there is probably no honourable member in this place less qualified to speak about financial matters than I am. I have the greatest difficulty in filling in my cheque butts and then doing the incredibly complex sums involved in that. Therefore I do not intend to take up much of the time of the House examining the finer financial points of the budget brought down by the Treasurer. I prefer to make some points about a wider view of the budget itself. It seems to be a sound budget which treads a careful path between parsimony and profligacy. It seems to have taken slight note of the major needs of the community in regard to services, health and education.

There has been criticism of the budget's effect on some vocational programs and its changes to access to free bus travel for some school students. Let me make a point about the latter. Despite claims to the contrary, the changes do not impose unbearable hardship on either school children or their parents. When I was in primary school - which seems as far back as Federation - my sister and I walked about two miles to school at Bondi Beach every day without notable deleterious effects. This budget will require some children to walk an extra half a kilometre to school and will change the eligibility of those with longer distances to travel. That does not seem to be an intolerable hardship for any healthy young Australian child. Cries from the Opposition in the other place that the changes will lead to children being killed on the roads are hysterical hyperbole which simply does not fit the historical facts.

These days, large numbers of children seem to be driven to school by parents, judging by the rows of cars double parked and parked across pedestrian crossings outside schools most mornings and afternoons. But given the cost of the school bus pass program, and the fact that it is a classic example of one section of the community subsidising another, I commend the Treasurer on his careful changes to the program. It is entirely appropriate in a use-pays age. I regret that there are some omissions from the budget. The utter failure to understand the crucial need to provide realistic funding for the upgrading of the Pacific Highway may well come back to haunt the Government. This highway, Australia's number one highway, has been long neglected by past governments, both State and Federal, in favour of the New England Highway. The Federal Government decided that the New England Highway would be designated as the national highway between Sydney and Brisbane, so it will not provide adequate specific funds for the Pacific Highway.

This is absurd and a major abnegation of the demonstrated responsibilities of government. Even though most of the blame for what has happened until now must go to the Federal Government, successive State governments must also accept a big share of the blame for their failure to pressure the Federal Government into a more reasoned view and for their own failure to provide adequate funds for the Pacific Highway. The north coast is growing faster than any other region of New South Wales. It already has a population of more than 500,000 people and must be given a road link that can serve it properly and, most of all, safely. But the Pacific Highway remains predominantly a single carriageway for the greater part of its distance. This crucially important road carries more than 8,000 vehicles a day - well beyond the engineering limits of a single carriageway. There is a clear demand for a dual-lane carriageway from Hexham to the Queensland border. But because of unforgivable neglect, Australia's number one road continues to have Australia's number one death spot on it where casualties - death, injury and destruction of property - are a cost the State and nation cannot regard with equanimity.

Since 1985 nearly 600 people have been killed and more than 10,000 people have been injured on the road between Hexham and the Queensland border. That is the highest toll in human life on any major highway. The National Roads and Motorists Association has estimated that at the present snail's-pace rate of development, limited as it is by utterly inadequate funding, the Pacific Highway will take at least another 40 years to reach an acceptable dual carriageway standard. Projecting the past catastrophic rate of the patchwork road, 2,400 people will die and another 40,000 will be maimed or crippled before it reaches a satisfactory condition.

The Federal Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics rates the Pacific Highway as the worst interstate highway. It says that $4 billion needs to be spent on it now. Studies show that when a two-lane road is replaced by a four-lane road the crash rate is reduced by up to 85 per cent. Even if funds were made available to upgrade the highway in the next 20 years - those funds are not presently allocated - it would mean a saving of 1,200 lives and 20,000 injuries. How can we contemplate those figures, say we are sorry and that the money is not available, and then just sit back, twiddle our thumbs and ignore the carnage? If the Government says it does not have the money to eliminate the horror stretches at Bellingen, Billinudgel, Bulahdelah, Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour and in the Maclean shire, why is it so doggedly opposed to allowing private enterprise to build toll roads of high quality around these black spots?

Perhaps privately built toll roads are not the best answer - and as we have seen toll roads can have political consequences for government - but in the name of commonsense they are the only answer for governments claiming they do not have the money to do the job themselves. Are safety and the lives of citizens to come second to a political ideology of State
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ownership as opposed to free enterprise involvement? Will the Government shrug off the awfulness of what happens on this highway daily? Does the Government offer any hope that, one day, it will have the money - with or without Federal help - to make this road into the sort of safe, world-standard, main highway it ought to be? Of course not, no more than there seems to be any prospect of the upgrade of the final section of the Riverina Highway into Hume Weir. This section of road has seen 40 major smashes in 10 years, yet funding for work on it has been cut in the budget and its future is obscure. We all understand that money is tight, but what is human life worth?

I had hoped to see in the budget some forward suggestion that the Government might be planning to ease the negative effect of the three iniquitous, counterproductive and regressive taxes that seem to have become entrenched as a millstone around the neck of development in this State. I speak, of course, of payroll tax, land tax and stamp duty. I fully understand that those three taxes are the only taxes the State Government has available to it and that it needs the revenue they provide. But surely it should not be beyond the wit and wisdom of the State Treasury to find a way to ease those taxes, to change thresholds, to vary payment arrangements, and to find other revenue sources more equitable than these which would allow them to be modified.

While I applaud the initiative of the Premier and the Treasurer in going south of the border to try to steal away some business and industry from President Kennett of Mexico, I point out that no business is going to incur the huge cost of relocation unless it is offered a big incentive. The Labor Party promised no new taxes in this budget, and it has delivered on that promise. Is it possible that next year a little lateral thinking and some rearrangement could produce not new or extra taxes but different taxes which might see this terrible triumvirate abolished or at least reduced? In that same area of trying to reduce costs I would like to have seen some rethink of petrol prices. It is within the purview of the State Government to have some effect on petrol prices. Within this State petrol prices are a scandal of manipulation, exploitation, discriminatory discounting and price rigging to whatever the market will bear.

Surely this is an inflationary cost to which the State Government could turn its attention. It could demand answers as to the reasons petrol prices will vary by as much as 10¢ a litre on any given day from one side of Sydney to the other. It could ask why oil companies can afford to sell unleaded fuel at 66¢ a litre at Bankstown while it is 76¢ on the north shore. Why can unleaded petrol cost 66¢ at Bankstown, 73¢ at Raymond Terrace, 79¢ at Taree, 80¢ at Tamworth and 84¢ at Walgett? Of course, I forgot the ubiquitous 0.9 per cent of a cent. Why, in a time of rounding up and rounding down, do we still have petrol prices ending in 0.9¢ a litre? Let us not take refuge in the claim that this is only a matter of the Federal Government and its draconian excises. It is certainly an unnecessary, artificial inflationary factor, but it does not explain why petrol is so much cheaper in Queensland, for instance, than it is in New South Wales.

Having had those few grumbles, let me widen the horizons a little. Having analysed and reported on government budgets since the beginning of the 1950s, I have learned what some commentators seem unwilling to concede: no budget will ever please anyone and Treasurers are loved or reviled according to the way the budget affects different vested interest groups. The budget is a fine example of that old saying "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". The Treasurer's quota of shattered shells seems relatively slight in the circumstances. I understand that he wrote his budget speech himself - both remarkable and commendable. Now that the Treasurer has broken some eggshells and weighed down some telephone books in his first budget in the first year of the Government's first term, or maybe its last term, we look to the later years of that term for some carefully handled yokes - and let those yokes be light.

Budgets are strange things. They are an annual exercise which have no special reason for being a once-a-year affair. Budgets are a parliamentary tribal ritual which excite the politicians and bemuse the man and woman in the street. Budgets are agonised over for months ahead, speculated about in the media and, to a lesser extent, the community. They are used to cause panic and anxiety. Every group with an axe to grind besieges government with its importuning and warns of dire consequences if its special needs are not met. Then, bit by bit, contentious pieces of the budget are leaked to selected media to see how they are received. Of course, they can then be changed if they will be too politically dangerous. By the time the Treasurer stands up and delivers the budget, and the journalists are released from the lockup, it is all a bit of an anticlimax because we have a feeling that we knew what was going to happen anyway.

In fact, to paraphrase Noel Coward, it seems to me that a budget is a ghastly public announcement of a government's strictly private intention to be prepared to do something absolutely different when it discovers that it cannot, after all, do what the budget said it intended to do. There are defects in this budget - defects mainly of omission. However, the budget suggests to me that this is a government that came to office with clearly defined targets and sought to achieve them at the first level in this step of economic figures. Like many people in the community who have been watching the early performance of this Government, of which we expect a great deal, I have a serious concern that it is rushing its bridges, going much too fast. It seems to me to be in far too much of a hurry to rearrange the world. It seems to be in great danger of trying to reinvent sliced bread.

I remind the Government that the ultimate undoing of that other great reformist government - the Whitlam Government of 1972 - was that it tried to be all things unto all people all at once. It did too much
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too soon and tripped over its own hurrying feet. It fell flat on its face, rejected by a community which had its own pace of accepting change. People get worried when things happen around them too quickly; they develop suspicion that something is being put over them. I urge the Government to slow down. It has 3½ years to achieve what it wants to achieve; it has no need to do what it is doing now - rushing, lemming-like towards a certain political precipice. Hasten slowly: get it right. Too often we cannot wait to get things done and we have no time to waste. However, it is strange that afterwards we seem to be able to find the extra time to go back and fix up what we stuffed up the first time. All in all, I offer a good report card to the Treasurer for a notable first try. Let him have a gold stamp on the wrist!

The Hon. ELAINE NILE [6.09]: I express my admiration for the late Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and extend my sympathy to his family and his people. He was a man who was admired by people of many nations. His death came as a shock, and gave relevance to the saying that the enemy within is greater than the enemy without. It was a cause for absolute shame that he was killed by one of his own people. That must have been horrific for his people and especially for the family. I shall read into Hansard part of what was said by his 18-year-old granddaughter, who referred to him as the "pillar of fire in front of the camp". That is a reference to when the children of Israel were coming out of the land of Egypt and God set before them the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. The granddaughter referred to her grandfather as that pillar of fire in front of the camp as he led the way to peace. In her personal tribute to Yitzhak Rabin she said that "the nation mourns" and added this most moving sentiment:

Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire in front of the camp and now we are just a camp left alone in the dark and we are so cold and sad.

I know they are speaking in terms of a national disaster. But how can you try to console an entire nation or let it share in your private pain when grandmother cannot stop crying and we are mute, feeling the vast emptiness now that you are gone?

Few really knew you. They can say many things about you but I feel they do not know at all the enormous extent of the pain and tragedy.

And yes, this is the holocaust - at least for us, the family and friends - because we are left without a pillar of fire.

Grandfather, you were and still are our hero. I wanted you to know that in everything I've done in life, I saw you before my eyes.

Your esteem and love were with us in every step we took and along every road we walked. We live in the light of your values, always.

You never abandoned us and now you have been abandoned. And now here you are, my eternal hero, cold and alone and I can do nothing to save you. You are so wonderful.

In that personal way she expressed the feelings of the people of Israel. He was their hero. I have been reading a book about the time after the State of Israel was declared. It is interesting that the name Yitzhak Rabin is mentioned in it. He was a great fighter for the State of Israel. King Hussein, whose grandfather was assassinated in front of his own eyes in Jerusalem in 1951 when he was the prince and once an enemy of Israel, said:

I never thought that the moment would come like this, when I would grieve the loss of a brother, a colleague, and a friend.

A man, a soldier who met us on the opposite side of a divide, whom we respected as he respected us, a man I came to know because I realised as he did that we had to cross over the divide, establish the dialogue, and strive to leave also for us a legacy that is worthy of him.

And so he did. And so we became brethren, and friends.

Never in all my thoughts would it occur to me that my first visit to Jerusalem . . . would be on such an occasion.

You lived as a soldier. You died as a soldier for peace, and I believe it is time for all of us to come out openly and to speak of peace. Not here today, but for all the times to come. We belong to the camp of peace. We believe in peace. We believe that our one God wishes us to live in peace and wishes peace upon us.

Let's not keep silent. Let our voices rise high to speak of our commitment to peace for all times to come, and let us tell those who live in darkness, who are the enemies of light . . . This is where we stand. This is our camp.

I pay a tribute to him and to his wife Leah.

The Hon. Franca Arena: The House did also.

The Hon. ELAINE NILE: That is right, as did the Leader of the Government in the House. Nothing would be worse than to have one's husband stand in the public domain, especially in that area. In 1974, after the 10-day war, my husband took a group of 30 Christians to Israel. I was with them and we lived in an Arab village on the Mount of Olives. We were the first group of tourists to visit Israel. We were subjected to death threats; we were told that any tourist who came there and who supported Israel would be shot. We did not tell that to the people who travelled with us.

We went to the Golan Heights and were told that if we heard gunfire we should just slide under the bed. That is the way people in that region have lived for many years. There were Russian tanks on the way up to the Golan Heights and triangles marked areas you were not allowed to enter because they were mined. I realised how horrific it would be to live like that. In 1975 those people regarded those conditions as part of their life; they became used to it. As Australians we know nothing of that type of life, and I pray to God that we will never have anything like that in Australia. The world has lost a great man. Many people disagreed with what he was doing, but that does not entitle anyone to cause the death of a man in that way.

I support the budget which basically is a responsible attempt to reduce the State's deficit. However, it contains some disappointments. The cutback in free school bus travel will increase the burden on families and will put many children at risk. I am reminded of Ebony Simpson, who alighted from a school bus and was then abducted and put in the boot of a car. I live in Gerroa which is hilly and the
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streets have no footpaths. A bike track has been built for children to use to get to the local school in Gerringong; but that is still dangerous for them.

I am disappointed that reductions have been made in funding for youth work employment programs, for organisations that assist in youth training, such as the Sydney City Mission, and that a decision has been made to close the veterinary laboratories which provide valuable advice for farmers. When I was single I worked for Australian Fertilisers and used to be able to rattle off the names of all the fertilisers - I never packed them, I just did the invoicing. This advice is essential for farmers. I quote from a media release issued by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition:

Carr Government's Hypocritical Waste Management Policies

The Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Richard Bull, has today accused the State Government of adopting hypocritical policies in relation to waste management and recycling.

The Biological and Chemical Research Institute (BCRI) at Rydalmere -

that is not far from where we used to live at Ryde -

which is to be closed as a result of substantial budget cuts to the Department of Agriculture - is the principal research facility undertaking environmental research.

The Coalition welcomes initiatives aimed at addressing waste management and waste reduction. However, this Government is now closing the principal research facility which is currently aimed at achieving environmentally sustainable development.

The research currently being undertaken by the BCRI is developing techniques to recycle sewerage sludge and green wastes; such as gardening waste which presently constitutes half of all waste deposited in land fills.

Similarly, the BCRI is also conducting research into Cadmium, a toxic carcinogenic heavy metal which accumulates in soils and prevents further waste recycling. Yet, the State Government plans to abandon this important research.

This sorry saga is evidence that the left hand of this Government does not know what its right hand is doing.

As I said recently in debate in this House, it is not a question of whether it is left or right; it is what is right for the people. The closure of the institute is not right. The media release continued:

I strongly suggest that Pam Allan immediately convenes a meeting with Minister for Agriculture, Richard Amery, to ensure that the BCRI secures the necessary funding to guarantee the continuation of the important research which is currently being undertaken. . .

One of the many projects currently under way at BCRI is industry-funded research which will help solve the problem of Sydney's ever-increasing wastes. Dumping sewage sludge into oceans and rivers is only a temporary measure, and has a devastating impact on the environment. Disposal of organic waste places a huge demand on Sydney's limited land-fill sites.

At Gerroa, where I live, we had nothing like pump-out tanks in the 1950s; we had gravel pits. The houses built more recently in the area have the pump-out tanks, but the old gravel pits have not been replaced. Therefore, when the pump-out tanks are full the waste slides down the hill into front gardens. When one stands on the lawn on occasions, one treads in -

The Hon. R. T. M. Bull: Mush.

The Hon. ELAINE NILE: It is worse than mushy! I said to our plumber once that the condition of the soil on our block was different from the soil in various other parts of the area. He put one finger into the ground, held it under my nose and said, "Smell this." He then made me smell the soil from another area, and it was different. He said, "You have their sewage coming down the hill."

The Hon. R. T. M. Bull: I bet the lawns are doing well.

The Hon. ELAINE NILE: But one does not want one's grandchildren playing on this lawn, especially in wet weather. That is a problem that small community of 400 people must contend with. The question posed when this matter is raised is what to do with the waste. But, where does the pump-out material go? The word is that the waste is taken to the Gerroa tip, from where it seeps through to the beach and into the ocean. I do not swim in the ocean any more. These matters must be discussed to work out the problem currently faced by the people of Gerroa.

I now refer to a minority group in society comprising people who are very handy when needed, but who are rubbished by many people. I refer to the police. The National Police Remembrance Day was held on 30 September 1995. Since 1862, 225 police officers have lost their lives in New South Wales, and remembrance services were held at St Mary's Cathedral and Wollongong on that day. It is very easy for people to knock the police. I remember that when our eldest son graduated from the Police Academy he was given a promotion to a public relations role. He and a female officer went into the schools, and I recall his coming home one day and telling me that they went into an assembly room containing many teachers, yet teenage students cried out, "Pig, pig!" This went on for quite a while, yet not one teacher reprimanded the students.

When the officers left the room and went into the school grounds, they were surrounded by a group of young people shouting "Pig, pig!" and making other comments, which I will not relate to the House. The female officer was in tears on that occasion. I am not keen on female police officers working on the front line, although police promotions work is generally all right. At the remembrance day services the men who had lost their lives were named. The most recent death involving a police officer in the Illawarra was that of Goulburn Police Academy's Senior Sergeant Wayne George, tragically killed at Picton on 8 June this year. He was only 36 years of age. He was travelling to Sydney along Picton Road at night when his police motorcycle was struck head-on by a car driven by a disqualified driver. Sergeant George was thrown onto the road into the path of two cars, and despite the efforts of paramedics he died on the way to hospital.

The next case to which I refer occurred in 1985 and involved Dapto Detective Steve Tier, who was killed in a high-speed car chase at Kembla Grange. His car slammed into a power pole as he pursued
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another car along the Princes Highway on the night of 24 July. His body was virtually broken into two parts. As a mother of two young men in the Police Service - despite the fact that we have received many abusive telephone calls over the years - I will never take the telephone off the hook. This is because of the fear, held by every mother, father and spouse of a police officer, of receiving a telephone call notifying that the related officer has been injured or killed in a face-to-face confrontation or a road accident, as happened in the case of the young men to whom I have referred. I have received from the Police Association of New South Wales papers relating to the deaths of Bob Spears and Peter Addison. We were overseas when those constables were killed, and I was shocked when I heard of the tragedy because, as I said, parents of police officers feel very much for the families of officers killed on duty. The Police Association wrote:

We have written to both the Minister and the Commissioner seeking that the Coroner's recommendations be implemented as a matter of urgency.

I have a copy of the coroner's recommendations, and I hope I do not bore members by reading these most important recommendations relating to the deaths of Robert Bruce Spears and Peter John Addison, and John Craig McGowan, who was responsible for the deaths of the two officers. The report read:

Both Constables approached the house and were confronted by McGowan dressed in a military style camouflage outfit and holding a Ruger rifle. He also had a knife in a pouch on his belt.

Call to Australia would like the carrying a knife in that way to be prohibited. The report continued:

The Constables retreated to the front of the police van which had been parked with front facing out of the driveway. They called on McGowan to drop the gun but instead he fired some shots and hit Spears in the head apparently killing him instantly. Const. Addison made a radio call to Port Macquarie Station calling for urgent assistance. Further shots were fired by McGowan and returned by Const. Addison. Const. Addison then ran across the road into a house apparently looking for a telephone. None was available and he then came out of the house and was in between it and another house occupied by Mr. Barnett.

Members can imagine how Constable Addison felt: he had no telephone on which to call through for help. The report continued:

Apparently in trying to reload his service revolver the speed strip containing his live bullets fell to the ground. I am more inclined to accept that this is how the strip ended up on the ground rather than he lost it when he received a bullet to the chest as the strip was found about 6 metres behind him. John McGowan knelt down on one knee, aimed and fired a shot hitting the Constable in the left side of the chest. Police arrived and sealed off the area and later a paramedic, Ambulance Officer Ted Hill of Kempsey Station, crawled to the two fallen Constables and checked their condition. He also moved Const. Spears body. Due to the darkness and poor street lighting the Police were not sure where McGowan was so they waited until daylight when McGowan's body was found behind a brick post in his front yard, apparently having shot himself in the head with his own rifle.

When the Constables had earlier spoken to Debra Minett she did not mention to them that McGowan had a gun. However, both Diana Pateman and Robert Price gave evidence that Minett had stated, after shots were heard by them, words to the effect that she should have told the police that McGowan had a gun. Debra Minett denied in her evidence that she had said that and she also denied that she knew he had a gun but that previously McGowan had told her he had disposed of a gun.

The coroner wrote the following:

I accept the evidence of both Pateman and Price as to the conversation and I am satisfied that had she told the Constables then they would've been in a position to take a different approach in attempting to arrest McGowan instead of treating it as a normal domestic violence matter. I cannot say that those deaths would not have occurred but at least they would have been better prepared to deal with McGowan and his gun. Debra Minett's failure to tell about the gun or even the possibility that he may have a gun was probably brought about by the fact that she wanted to protect him. Even though McGowan had physically and verbally assaulted her in the past and she was scared of him, Debra Minett still wanted to protect him because as she stated he was "her best friend". There is no doubt that Debra Minett should have told the Constables about the gun and let them take action accordingly.

Debate adjourned on motion by the Hon. Elaine Nile.