Law and order is shaping up as one of the key battlegrounds in the October ACT election with Liberal candidate John Mikita the latest to wade in against the Greens' intention to rein in police numbers.
Mr Mikita, the grandson of murdered Canberra grandmother Irma Palasics, has called out Greens MLA Andrew Braddock who publicly declared that too much money for police leads to a situation called "over-policing" which could in turn persecute more people.
"Increasing police numbers leads to a situation called over-policing, where they [police] are finding more crime and persecuting people for that," Mr Braddock said in a contentious online post which he has since removed.
The Braddock comments come after the Labor-Greens government had little option but to increase police numbers after former ACT police chief Neil Gaughan revealed how workload demands had resulted in health impact on his officers in the wake of repeated Productivity Commission reports of inadequate police funding.
Mr Mikita, who is running against Mr Braddock in the northern Canberra seat of Yerrabi, said that his family could not be more supportive of police after what they had been through.
"My family were the victims of one of Canberra's worst crimes - the murder of my grandmother Irma Palasics and the brutal assault of my grandfather Gregor in 1999," he said.
"When my family needed them most, it was the police who were there for us."
He said that his constant lobbying to hunt down those responsible helped an underfunded police force finally crack the case.
Former chief police officer Neil Gaughan had been a driving force behind getting a dedicated team of detectives to sift through all the details of the Operation Spyder cold case in an effort to find those responsible for the brutal murder.
Police had looked into about 300 persons of interest during the long-running investigation before arresting two men, Steve Fabriczy, 69, and Joseph Vekony, 68. Both are in custody as the trial continues.
The two Melbourne men allegedly killed 72-year-old Irma Palasics, bashed husband Gregor, and ransacked the couple's McKellar home on November 6, 1999. The investigation had been slow until Fabriczy's DNA, said to have been taken years earlier by Victorian police, was allegedly matched by the Australian Federal Police in mid-2020.
"In more than two decades since this heinous crime, I have advocated for better funding for ACT Police to ensure no other family has to endure what mine did," Mr Makita said.
"Through my advocacy, I have connected with hundreds of other victims of crime, many of whom are seeking answers to their own unsolved cases.
"My grandmother's case remained unresolved for 23 years, primarily due to insufficient funding for the police to continue cold case investigations.
"Limited police resourcing, fuelled by the mindset of government members like Andrew Braddock, is why too many crimes go unsolved and response times are increasing."
Also running against Mr Braddock in Yerrabi is a former police officer, Jason Taylor, for the Belco Party.
