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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 246 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 17 June 2021 by Dr J. Krishnan

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

POLICE — DRONES

246. Dr J. KRISHNAN to the Minister for Police:

I refer to the McGowan Labor government's commitment to keeping Western Australians safe through its significant investment in frontline policing. Will the minister update the house on how the government is ensuring that WA's frontline police officers have the resources and equipment they need to respond to incidents and keep the community safe, including the rollout of the new WA Police Force drones?

Mr P. PAPALIA replied:

I thank the member for his question and for his fulsome support of the Western Australia Police Force. Madam Speaker, I acknowledge yet again that we in this state are beneficiaries of your hard work in the role of police minister, when we experienced the biggest-ever investment in police technology, as well as in police resourcing. We are starting to see some of the more recent rollouts, but they were all won during the Speaker's tenure.

In the last term of Parliament, we delivered OneForce mobile phones, body-worn cameras, the expansion of the automatic numberplate recognition camera scheme and phone apps for officers to boost awareness and safety. And, of course, we are in the process of rolling out 950 additional police officers above and beyond the normal attrition rate—the biggest growth in history—a 15 per cent leap in the number of police officers serving this state.

Most recently, we have seen the results of a $1.3 million investment in police RPAS. I love the police. I come from the military, which has made acronyms an art form, but the police challenge it for that title! I now have a whole new dictionary of acronyms to learn. The police call drones remotely piloted aircraft systems. As a result of this $1.3 million investment, every region in the state is now serviced by drones, with 41 aircraft, or drones, which are available in every single district in the region. Every regional police district has at least two, I believe, and there are more in the metropolitan area, with some centrally located at the police air wing. Importantly, we have 100 pilots of these aircraft and they are all over the state. We now have every single police district covered by aviation assets in the form of these RPASs—the drones—giving incredible assistance in all forms of police operations, including searches and intelligence gathering.

Interestingly, they are finding new roles for them all the time and benefits that we may not have anticipated. One that I found very interesting was the police response to serious and fatal crashes, which covers the road safety portfolio as well. As a consequence of having these aircraft, police are now able to map crash scenes, reducing the time that arterial roads are closed. The time for conducting that task post–a fatal or serious crash has gone down, on average, from two and a half hours to just 20 minutes. That is an incredible benefit. It has been replicated across a range of activities and initiatives in the police force, but it is another benefit of the massive investment by the McGowan government that police have received.