Tony Abbott has decided that filming people committing crimes is preferable to wasting money on early intervention crime prevention so he has stripped funding from hundreds of community and charity programs. If you live in Western Sydney you will get some cameras…eventually….when we are finished announcing them… again and again and again. Unfortunately for those of you in leftie South Australia…you get nothing!
You always know politicians are desperate when they start talking about CCTV cameras on street corners. It usually happens towards the end of election campaigns, but on Friday Tony Abbott reached for this most micro of populist issues at the end of a week that left his macro budget sales pitch in tatters.
Making a law-and-order pitch, Abbott visited Campbelltown to highlight the allocation of $20m over the next 12 months to install new CCTV cameras and fund other safety projects around Australia.
He said the program – funded by seized proceeds of crime – was “an important element in our budget”.
Experts and welfare groups have argued, correctly, I fear, that the changes to the youth welfare system could lead to a spike in the crime rate. Young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are already 28 times more likely to be in youth detention than other Australians. And when the cuts to Aboriginal Legal Services are added to this mix, the multiplier effect means this crisis risks becoming a catastrophe.
The Government has outlined more than $500 million in cuts to Indigenous programs, including health, but it’s not yet clear exactly where those cuts will fall.
Indigenous legal and health services are concerned that direct budget cuts will affect frontline services and there’s uncertainty over the future of 28 Indigenous children and family centres across the country.
Giving young unemployed people access to the dole for only six months of the year could lead to an increase in crime and poorer working conditions, welfare groups have warned.
The undeniable data-based fact is that early intervention social programs deliver better bang-for-buck than just about any other form of public spending.
We know that well-run NGO programs for at-risk youth drive down rates of criminal behaviour, incarceration, mental illness, social dislocation, and future unemployment.
And we know these social ills, if allowed to fester and bloom, end up costing us all billions upon billions of dollars.
The Household Organisational Management Expenses (HOME) Advice program, which has existed as a pilot since 2002, costs only around $3,000 on average to prevent a family falling into homelessness. This compares to an average of $43,000 the taxpayer has to stump up if a family becomes homeless. By not expanding a successful program from its eight pilot locations, the Commonwealth Government has actually lost millions in tax revenue.
For about $100 million per year, the Australian government could have funded the HOME Advice program to work with 33,000 families.
So if the economic case is so black-and-white, why then are governments not tripping over themselves to fund programs like Functional Family Therapy in every prison in Australia?
Mostly because the economic benefit of social policy takes a long time to be seen. Half of the benefit of Functional Family Therapy, for example, is seen 10 years after the program is funded. Modern politicians, locked into an electoral cycle perspective, find it tough to embrace a program that will slowly start to reveal its results in a decade’s time.
18 February 2014
Attorney General John Rau has called upon Prime Minister Tony Abbott to reinstate more than $2million in crime prevention funding for South Australian local communities.
The cuts also mean that a $490,000 rollout of CCTV, plus better lighting and signage around the Adelaide Oval and Riverbank Precinct will not proceed.
The leader of an early intervention program for vulnerable youths is seeking legal advice to save the project from closing down, after the Abbott government backed away from distributing crucial grant money promised by the former Labor government.
More than 2000 teenagers have come through Operation Newstart since it was established in 1997 for children aged 14 to 16 who routinely skip school or who have trouble with the law, drugs and alcohol, and who are often victims of abuse.
A spokesperson for the Minister for Justice said ”Under this plan, $50 million will be provided to communities to allow them to deliver effective local solutions to crime and antisocial behaviour by installing measures such as CCTV and better lighting.”
The Abbott government has backed away from distributing millions of dollars in grants promised to dozens of charities, community groups and local councils under Labor’s national crime prevention program.
Father Riley hit out at the Coalition’s decision, pointing out that national crime prevention grants were funded through the proceeds of crime rather than general revenue and were not election promises.
”I don’t understand this, the proceeds of crime is not taxpayer money,” Father Riley said.
The biggest loser is the Police Citizens Youth Club, which has been warned the $7 million it was promised is ”on hold and unlikely to be delivered”, according to an insider.
The money was earmarked to provide youth mentoring programs in disadvantaged areas, including the ”Making Men” and ”Girl’s Choice” projects to steer young people away from a life of crime.
One group that was warned not to spend on the assumption that agreements were valid is the Women in Prison Advocacy Network, which was promised $297,000 to start a youth mentoring program in inner-city Sydney and the La Perouse and Maroubra areas
The National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy had secured a total of $600,000 for programs for indigenous youth in Sydney and Dubbo but was warned the money was under review.
Mission Australia, which had been promised nearly $500,000, said it ”remains optimistic”.
28 August 2013
CRIME prevention in Parramatta is the focus of both Labor and Coalition sides in the lead-up to the September 7 election.
Liberal candidate Martin Zaiter announced last week that a Coalition government would give $1 million for Parramatta Council to install CCTV cameras in the CBD and the suburbs.
The Liberal announcement follows on from Labor MP Julie Owens’ similar commitment last week.
The Labor promise was for a $1 million package comprising CCTV cameras and various youth crime prevention programs.
Ms Owens said that money “would be there” regardless of the election outcome.
Mr Keenan said a Coalition government would work on the basis of its $1 million commitment.
21 August 2013
Coachmans Park at St Marys was the backdrop for the Coalition’s plans for crime prevention equipment.
Opposition spokesman for communications Malcolm Turnbull, Opposition spokesman for indigenous development Senator Marise Payne, Penrith Council mayor Mark Davies and Liberal Lindsay candidate Fiona Scott were involved in the announcement.
A total of $300,000 in funding for CCTV cameras has been promised by the Coalition if elected, to be installed at Queen St and in High St and Station St, Penrith.
20 August 2013
Tony Abbott visits the Liverpool CBD to promise $300,000 for CCTV cameras.
AN ABBOTT government would reinstate a Howard government program that funded CCTV cameras in crime hotspots around the country.
Announcing the $50 million policy at Leumeah train station on Saturday, the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said the program would give local governments the tools they need to tackle street crime.
”We will restore the $50 million-plus that’s been cut … that was going to crime prevention programs. That money will be available for councils to apply so they can get better lighting and things like CCTV,” he said.
Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says a Coalition government will spend $50 million over four years installing CCTV cameras if it wins office.
Ok we get it. Enough with the cameras already! What this boils down to is the government have decided that their bottom line should benefit from the proceeds of crime rather than investing the money in preventing future crime because let’s face it, the way Tony’s going, it won’t be his problem. Are we all just collateral damage? How many are to be sacrificed for “the economy”? Will we have no planning for the future beyond “let’s fiddle the numbers to make us look like we are reducing the deficit”?
