WHAT had been done and what was still needed to address crime and antisocial behaviour in Dubbo were the focus of a document launched by Dubbo MP Troy Grant and Mayor Mathew Dickerson yesterday.
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The East Dubbo Minister's Action Group Discussion Paper Report contained 43 strategies to tackle the issues. It was the product of the East Dubbo's Minister's Action Group (MAG), formed in 2012 to target problems in the Apollo Estate.
Mr Grant said the group had already achieved "measurable" outcomes, with a plan to sell 50 public housing properties and eight blocks of land over a three-year period up to its 24th sale.
"We're halfway through that de-concentration strategy, there will be 50 per cent fewer department of housing occupants and instead there will be private owners in those properties," he said.
Tighter scrutiny of whether public housing tenants were complying with their responsibilities, including more inspections, had led to more people being evicted for doing the wrong thing, Mr Grant said.
"We had this issue with the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT), now NCAT, when it came to our (low) success rate in bringing down measures against tenants for bad behaviour," he said.
"In the first year the MAG was established there were seven evictions per annum and then that did increase quite significantly to around 30 per annum, largely on the back of our representations to the CTTT."
Several clean-up days had been held "with 16 and 20 tonnes of rubbish being removed from key areas", Mr Grant said, and the MAG had played a key role in getting mail deliveries restored to West Dubbo when Australia Post withdrew them following violence against posties.
In addition, Dubbo City Council had increased street sweeping services and applied for funding to install security cameras at the Myall Street shopping complex next to the Apollo Estate.
"What's also measurable is that for the funding we've given to Apollo House to run a resilience program - they have data on how many interventions they have had with children and many people have been exposed to their programs," Mr Grant said.
While the 'Minister' in Minister's Action Group originally referred to Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward, who was subsequently replaced by Gabrielle Upton, Mr Grant said, it now effectively referred to him. With his own promotion to Cabinet he has taken on the role of minister in charge because of his improved access to each of the ministers in the cabinet to take forward MAG issues.
Cr Dickerson, who had a role in chairing monthly agency meetings, said the strategy was not a quick fix, rather, a long-term one needed to bring about major generational change.
He said an accompanying strategic plan for the next five years identified children from birth to age eight as a critical target group.
Boosting early school attendance and improving child development and education indices to at least the national average were both goals, he said.
"If kids aren't going to kindy and second class, they're learning the behaviour of staying home and that of older siblings and cousins, then before you know it, they're committing crimes," he said.
"Small changes to improving the way those kids from zero to eight live will help change the next generation," he said.
An annual report card measuring the group's work against the strategic plan would be made public to keep the group accountable, Mr Grant said.
A Facebook page had been set up for the public to monitor the group's activities and ask questions about its work.