Law and order issues in Queensland

Saturday, 11 August 2012 12:01 | Written by Graham Young

The Queensland Government seems to put a high priority on law and order with a major bill being introduced to parliament next week amending the Criminal Code to introduce stronger penalties for some offences, and to abolish the Sentencing Commission. Do voters approve? How important is law and order as an issue?

Law and order elections were common back in the 90s but have taken a back seat lately. They were barely mentioned in the last election, although the LNP did promise to increase police numbers.

It seems that while politicians aren't talking about law and order as much, it is still close to the heart of all voters. You do find differences in enthusiasm from LNP to Greens, but in each case more supporters of each party thought the government ought to do more about crime than thought the opposite, with the caveat that for the Greens the percentage in favour of doing more was 36%, much less than 50% or doing no more.

More About Crime

The new measures that are being introduced are:

An increase in the maximum non-parole period from 20 to 30 years for people who commit multiple murders
An increase in the maximum non-parole period for single murders from 15 to 20 years
An increase in the maximum penalty for assaulting a police officer from 7 to 14 years
Make the non-parole period for killing a police officer 25 years (5 more than for the murder of anyone else)
Create a $5,000 fine and two year licence suspension for evading police
Abolition of the Sentencing Council

Support for most of these was strong, with the exception of the abolition of the Sentencing Council. In the case of the council, most didn't know anything about it.

. Specific Crime Measures Totals

However, attitudes do vary between voting intentions. I've attached party breakdowns on these issues without specific comment on each, but there is a tendency for Greens and Labor voters to be less concerned about the incidence of specific crime in general, and violence towards police, than Katter and LNP voters. Why this might be so will be covered in the qualitative analysis next post.

Multiple Murder