Regional Burglar Beware programme under-funded

15 May 2008

The State Government should get serious about crime prevention and start allocating more money to successful programs, such as Burglar Beware, WA’s leading membership organisation, the RAC, has said.

In its budget handed down last week, the Carpenter Government allocated only $1.24million dollars over four years to the expansion of the Burglar Beware program.
It’s estimated that $1million is needed on an annual basis to properly expand the program.

The government has not committed to expand the program into either Bunbury or Kalgoorlie, despite recent figures compiled by the RAC identifying these areas as regional burglary hotspots.

Three Bunbury suburbs (Withers, 2; Usher, 4; and Carey Park, 8) and two Kalgoorlie suburbs (Hannans, 6; and Boulder, 10) recently made the top 10 in a list of regional burglary hot-spots.
The RAC’s Executive Manager of Member Advocacy David Moir said the RAC is concerned the state government is not tackling crime head-on.

“It is important that the government shows a stronger commitment to burglary reduction,” he said. “Not expanding Burglar Beware into Bunbury and Kalgoorlie is short sighted and not fair on the good honest folk of these major regional centres.”

Burglary remains a major issue for RAC members with two thirds claiming it was important and required urgent attention according to a recent RAC survey.  Only 13 per cent of those respondents said they thought burglary had improved in the past year.

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