PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (14:48): Again, my question is for the Minister for Police. Can the minister advise whether the government has broken its promise to reduce red tape to keep officers on the beat, given that the police commissioner stated on 5 March this year:

We've still got detectives standing around photocopiers. There's a whole range of inefficiencies that need to be put in.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (14:48): I think that the Premier yesterday outlined one of the projects that we are running through this public sector reform program, the 90-day projects that we are running. SAPOL has selected the first of many. They may not all be under this program, but this will be the commencement of a fairly widespread, vigorous and targeted attack, if you like, on red tape. The first of those was done at Holden Hill and was targeted at the old-fashioned delivery of summonses, whereby two police officers were committed to knocking on a door, hoping that somebody was home to hand them a piece of paper.

What we have been able to do at Holden Hill is SMS the individual and get a reply from them as to whether they will be appearing in court, and that process has reduced the amount of red tape, if you like, or waste of police resources. That will be rolled off across the state. We are having discussions in terms of transmitting evidence to the courts, which is currently being done by photocopying and which involves literally thousands if not tens of thousands of pages.

We are having discussions with the courts authority at this particular point in time to determine whether we can actually use electronic transfer of data. That will be an enormous saving of police resources, and that was one of the issues specifically referred to by the police commissioner. The use of photocopiers is the use of a technology that is probably past its use-by date by at least a decade to two decades. There are other projects that are currently under consideration that—

The Hon. I.F. Evans: Get rid of them at the ministerial office and see how you cope.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: Yes—will further reduce the time that the police have got to use sworn officers to do fairly mundane and tedious administrative processes.