Page 2580 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
And I note this went on for years, Madam Speaker:
By allowing a continuation of a situation where staffing levels are so low that members are constantly and continually being placed in situations where because of a dearth of numbers they are regularly outnumbered by intoxicated and aggressive people placing them at an unreasonable risk of serious injury due to violence.
The notice continues:
This lack of staffing levels has allowed a culture to develop where it is apparently accepted that Police can be confronted and face abusive and aggressive behaviour again elevating the likelihood of our members being the subject of an unnecessary violence.
We have a situation where the government announced the alcohol crime targeting team, ripped money out of the hotels and club sector to fund it and under-resourced the city beats to a point where for a couple of years they feared for their own safety and could not do the job. Then what did the government do? It robbed Peter to pay Paul. It closed the alcohol crime targeting team that was being funded by the clubs and hotels sector to basically collapse it into the city beat and said, “Look, we’ve doubled the size of the city beat.” Yes, they did, but in doing so they took away the alcohol crime targeting team.
My understanding is that that resulted effectively on the ground in an extra two police. In the context of police officers fearing for their safety, saying they struggled to do their job effectively, in a situation where the government refuses to provide the adequate protections to our police, what is the government doing? I will tell you what it is doing. It is continually eroding the resources that are needed to do the job on the ground.
What I would call on this government to do is to replace the $15 million that they ripped out in last year’s budget. It should make sure that they adequately resource the police. The police will be loyal and they will say the right things in estimates and so on. But you cannot rip $15 million out of an organisation and say that has got no effect. Clearly, it does. The government should provide that funding. Put it back in.
When we look at adequate funding for police, we should not provide additional resources that are below the cost of doing business, because that is, in effect, a cut. If we do not adequately resource our police force to keep pace with the operational demands they have got for a growing city, that is effectively a cut.
Most particularly, most importantly, the government should make sure that we resource the city beat so we never again get a situation where police officers for two years plead for more resources because they are unsafe, because they cannot do their job, and get ignored by the government. The government’s response then is to secretly, without any consultation, collapse the alcohol crime targeting task force into the city beat to make the numbers look better.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video