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Mr ANDREW STONER: My question is directed to the Minister for Police. Will the Minister explain why three police have been cut from the Mid North Coast Local Area Command since 2003 when towns such as Kempsey are suffering increased crime, including violent attacks last Thursday when juvenile gangs attacked police and fire brigade crews and a pistol was drawn on ambulance personnel?
Mr CARL SCULLY: This is the character who sent a letter addressed to me to his local newspaper first and had the media ring me for comment before I had received the letter from him. That is how seriously he treats policing in his area. This is a stunt. I said to the media, "Hang on a minute, I will see if it has come in." The newspaper got the letter before I did. I can only assume that anything the Leader of The Nationals says in his electorate about policing is baseless.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of The Nationals will cease interjecting.
Mr CARL SCULLY: I have said on a few occasions that there are people on the Opposition side of the House who genuinely hold concerns about issues in their electorates, and they come to me and talk about them. But the Leader of The Nationals is not one of them.
Mr Andrew Stoner: Are you not concerned about this?
Mr CARL SCULLY: I am concerned.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of The Nationals will cease interjecting.
Mr CARL SCULLY: The Government is so concerned about Kempsey policing that we will rebuild the Kempsey police station. The Government will allocate millions of dollars to Kempsey policing, so the Leader of The Nationals should not come into this Chamber and pretend that the Government is not concerned about Kempsey police because we are. In relation to those issues, if the Leader of The Nationals were serious, he would do what a number of his Nationals colleagues do: come to see me and say, "We've got a couple of issues in our electorates."
Mr Andrew Stoner: I wrote to you last week, Sparkles.
Mr CARL SCULLY: No, you did not. The Leader of The Nationals has never spoken to me about this issue.
Mr Andrew Stoner: Yes, I did.
Mr CARL SCULLY: The Leader of The Nationals has never spoken to me about this issue. He has never spoken to me about it, so I do not think he should talk like this. If the issues are as he says they are, I am happy to talk to the commander and deal with them in the manner in which his colleagues deal with issues of that nature. He should come and talk to me. Let us discuss it to see whether additional police resources need to be provided in his electorate. But the Leader of The Nationals must stop telling untruths. As I said yesterday and the day before, and as the Leader of The Nationals knows—because I keep telling him—it is all very well to trot around this State and pull out the status of a particular police area command—
Mr Andrew Stoner: We have been three down since 2003, and you know it.
Mr CARL SCULLY: The Leader of The Nationals knows that when the Coalition was last in government, police numbers were 229 below the authorised police strength. Shame on them! It was a disgusting record of police strength. At every point, the Coalition disparaged the police, and people came to me and said that the cops are sick of it.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to order.
Mr CARL SCULLY: People kept coming to me and saying, "How can we stop them bagging the cops? We're sick of it. Every time they get up in Parliament and every time they get on the radio, they're bagging the cops." The police in the electorate of the Leader of The Nationals are good men and women and he should not be talking them down. How dare he come into the Chamber again and disparage them. They are good people, and if they need additional resources because of particular incidents, I am happy to consider that. Come and talk to me about it.