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Victoria police chief to delay crime statistics release to avoid election Victoria police chief to delay crime statistics release to avoid election
(about 7 hours later)
Victoria’s police chief will delay releasing November’s crime statistics to avoid any impact on the state election. The Victoria police chief commissioner, Ken Lay, doesn’t want to get caught up in a political fight over crime statistics just days before the state election.
Police chief commissioner Ken Lay says he was concerned when he realised the stats were due for release three days before the election on 29 November. He has opted to deal with a “no-win situation” by delaying the release of quarterly crime statistics until after the November 29 poll.
“Going back a couple of years ago, my people set out a timetable of when we would be releasing crime stats,” he told Fairfax Media. “I picked up that they would be three days before the election six or eight months ago and that worried me. Lay said whatever he did with the crime data, he would face allegations of political bias.
“I didn’t want to be standing up doing a press conference three days out from an election, talking about what was up and what was down because of the obvious discussions that would take place, and [with people] seeking my advice about whether I supported one side or the other in relation to policy.” “This was a no-win situation for the commissioner,” Lay told reporters on Monday.
Lay said he sought legal advice and spoke to the ombudsman and the Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary before making his decision to delay. “I was either going to be criticised for making a bad decision now, or, two to three days out from an election, I was going to be criticised for acting in a partisan political way.”
“The bottom line is, I took the best possible advice and the ombudsman’s advice in the end swayed me that it seemed to be reasonable and sensible to delay the stats,” he said. Lay was due to release the quarterly crime statistics on November 26, but instead he’ll release them shortly after the poll.
“[I took] the best possible advice to protect the organisation and protect myself four days out from an election,” he said.
Lay’s predecessor, Simon Overland, resigned in 2011 after an ombudsman’s report found he had released misleading crime statistics a month before the 2010 state election.
Overland moved the crime statistics release date to a month before the poll to avoid politicisation, but it meant some data had not been verified.
The figures, which included data that turned out to be false, were used by the then-Labor government to support its law and order credentials in the campaign.
Lay said he had originally planned to release the data without comment, but the Victorian ombudsman, Deborah Glass, changed his mind.
“She said without an independent body to mitigate the risk it is reasonable and indeed sensible to delay the release of statistics by a few days to avoid any risk of politicisation,” Lay said.
Victoria’s newly-created Crime Statistics Agency is due to publish its first independent data in January.
“If an independent crime stats agency was in existence I wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation,” Lay said.
Lay said he told the state government and opposition in July he planned to delay the data release by a few days in November, and neither had an issue with it then.
But on Monday the deputy opposition leader, James Merlino, said the Victorian people deserved to see the data.
“The only people that benefit from not releasing these statistics is the government,” Merlino told reporters.
The premier, Denis Napthine, said the move was “in the best interests of getting proper debate around crime figures statistics rather than a political debate”.
“This is a decision made purely by the police. This is not a political decision, but I welcome the decision,” Napthine told reporters.