The Federal Government’s failure to release the Ayers report into the Australian Federal Police to the public is inexcusable. Its failure to release it to the ACT Government is farcical. The exercise shows a complete contempt for the people of Australia in particular the people of the ACT who are so profoundly affected by the fate of AFP and contempt for police officers themselves. The last group is one that this government pretends to support. It shows a complete contempt for processes of good government.
The people of the ACT and the ACT Government have every right to assume bad faith on the part of the Federal Government and have every right to assume they have something to hide. This is cowardly way to do government.
The way to do government in a liberal-democratic society should be to be open and honest with those affected by government decisions. Voters should be given as much information as possible so that they can come to their own conclusions. If the people have the information, they will at least understand the decisions that flow from it. They will be more likely to be persuaded that the decision is the right one overall if they have the information. If they do not get the information, they just have to assume the worst: that the Government is trying to appease one or more special constituencies at the expense of the broad national good.
As it is we can have no faith in decisions flowing from the Ayers report.
We can only assume that the Government is misusing the Ayers report to support a law-and-order blast in the face of One Nation whinges. Putting more police on the job, however, only treats symptoms of crime, not causes. Causes such as alienation of youth, drug addiction, selfishness and greed in society are much harder to tackle and this Government has not been too good at it. And its rejection of the heroin trial shut the gate on what could have been a promising antidote to so much crime: robbery for drugs.
It may be that with a report on policing, there might be some security issues. That might lend a Government to suppressing some sensitive parts of the report which might give information to terrorists. But that should not result in the suppression of the whole report and it should certainly not prevent it being given to the ACT Government.
As it is the ACT Government, and the people of the ACT can only assume some underhand budget shuffling and poor decision-making. If the Government does not like being called underhand and does not like the accusation of bad faith, there is a simple antidote: release the report so people can judge for themselves.
The report has apparently raised the question of whether the ACT should still get its policing done by the AFP. There is some suggestion that the ACT could get policing done by a state force, presumably NSW, or have its own force. Either of these would be worse than staying with the AFP.
There are great advantages for the ACT and Australia in continuing the present arrangement. The AFP gives ACT police officers greater career opportunities. They can move from community policing to the bigger picture and back. Their experience in wider law enforcement can only help the ACT. Similarly ACT community policing experience can help the AFP and the wider Australian community. There are also economies of scale to be had. A purely ACT force would be too insular. If anything other states, especially the smaller ones, should move to the ACT position (as happens in Canada), rather than the ACT moving the other way.