At their first monthly council meeting, the freshly elected councillors started the push for a drug court and a rehabilitation centre to serve Dubbo and the region, and an expansion of the city’s CCTV network.

The moves come as no surprise. Various candidates made crime and related social issues a focus in the September 9 council elections.

Of course, the council does not have control over police, the courts, drug crimes and sentencing or treatment of users.

But, it appears to have the will to push the issue with the NSW Government and the departments which do.

It is timely that Dubbo has a council focusing on crime.

While the police in Dubbo have scored considerable successes in reducing some crime rates in the past year, others remain stubbornly high. The officers, naturally, are determined to drive them all down. 

The DRC has rightly identified underlying social issues as factors which contribute to crime.

As Councillor Stephen Lawrence said “ … if we are to make real headway in reducing our unacceptably high crime rates, which in some respects are triple state averages, we need a sustained effort to attack the causes of crime”.

The Mayor and five councillors are on a committee which will investigate the possibility of tackling intergenerational social disadvantage, substance abuse, criminal behaviour and other social problems.

They will examine actions taken in other centres and see if they can be adapted to Dubbo.

While crime and the fight against it are not normally in the purview of local government, crime does impact the lives of everyone in the city in some way.

The council will obviously work in with police at a local level.

But, it could be a long, hard fight to achieve its goals, particularly for the drug court and rehab centre.

They would be costly – perhaps too costly in the view of government and its departments … and we all know how hard it is to get funding.

Councillors say they are determined to achieve their aims.

They will need to be and the community should back them to the hilt.