POLICE — BUDGET
946. Mr D.R. MICHAEL to the Minister for Police:
I refer to the McGowan Labor government's commitment
to keeping Western Australia safe and strong. Can the minister update the house
on the measures that this government has taken to support our police officers
in the important work that they do in protecting our community?
Mrs M.H. ROBERTS
replied:
I thank the member for Balcatta for
that question. I also note his choice of tie. Is that a Balcatta Football Club
tie?
Mr D.R. Michael: It is.
Mrs M.H. ROBERTS: What an
excellent choice and what a great club.
The SPEAKER: Preamble,
minister.
Mrs M.H. ROBERTS: I thank
the member for the question on policing. What a difference four years makes.
What a difference the McGowan government has made with its support of the Western
Australia Police Force. If we think back to four years ago, what we inherited
was a mess. We saw crime escalating out of control, we saw methamphetamine use
increasing on a month-to-month basis and we saw a failed metropolitan police
operating model that had the police force split into two teams—the
local policing teams and the response teams, and police officers traipsing from one end of the metropolitan area to the other.
Of course, in that last budget back in 2016–17 we saw a police force that was having to suck up
more and more efficiency dividends as money was cut out of its budget.
Four years later, we see an
injection of some $755 million into the police budget. That is right—over
three-quarters of a billion dollars. Not
only that, we have had an opposition promising zero extra police. At the
election we promised about 143—we
promised 100 police officers for meth and other staff and we promised 30 for
the regional enforcement unit, another 13 to cover the extended hour
police stations and, on top of that, we over-delivered another 10 to support
family and domestic violence. In April this year, we committed another 150
officers and then in the recent budget another 800. That has taken us to over 1
100 additional police officers—a substantial commitment by the McGowan
government.
But our commitment to keeping Western
Australians safe and strong does not stop there. It does not stop with the extra money, the extra officers and the much
better operating model. In addition, we have delivered on so many things
that our police officers have needed for years. Police were calling for
stab-proof vests back in 2013. The former government
gave them a little mini trial in 2015 but put no money in the budget. What have
we done now? We have allocated $19.2 million to give them personally
issued vests so that our police officers are as best protected as they can be.
We have also rolled out OneForce mobile phones to all our police officers and
body-worn cameras—again something that should have been done years ago.
They have been delivered by our government. There has been $20.9 million in funding for body cameras, which
are better for not only the police but also the general public, because
there is that record of interaction.
In
addition, we have delivered a number of police stations. I know that the member
for Collie–Preston is very grateful for the new police station
in Capel, which I note the Liberal Party still does not support. We are
delivering a new police and justice complex
at Armadale at a cost of $85 million. That will be opening next year. More
recently, we committed to the Fremantle police complex, at a cost of
over $52 million—something, again, that the Liberal Party failed to
deliver on over all that time.
We have protected our police
officers as best as we can against COVID-19. We have put extra laws in place.
We have introduced a police redress scheme to recognise those people who were
forced to leave and be medically retired and who got no form of redress under
any former government. We have also taken those medical retirement provisions
out of section 8 of the Police Act and removed that indignity from our
officers.
We have put in place a very long
list of supports for our police force and seen the results of it. Compared with
the peak of the 2015–16 crime wave under the Barnett–Harvey
era, there was a massive 28 000 fewer offences in 2019–20 than there
were in 2016–17. That is a 10 per cent across-the-board reduction. In
terms of the wastewater drug testing that is
done nationally—not by us, but nationally—we have seen the
lowest levels of meth consumption in the last quarter since testing
began. Metropolitan Perth consumption is more than 60 per cent lower than it
was at the end of 2016.
I
thank the Premier and the team for their strong support of our police officers
so that they can keep Western Australia safe, strong and protected.