Women in Policing

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): My question is to the Minister for Police. Since July 2016, what percentage of police recruits has been women?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety, Minister Assisting the Minister for Health, Minister Assisting the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:32): I thank the deputy leader for her question. In terms of the exact number, obviously I do not have that in front of me. However, I can point to the fact that the police have been doing a significant amount of work to increase the percentage of women coming through the graduation process and the academy. We have a very significant training program underway at the moment.

As members would be aware, we are recruiting through the 313 program a huge number of extra officers into our police force. A significant number of women are coming through that program. In terms of the exact percentage, I will have to take that on notice, but from firsthand accounts, having attended many of the graduation ceremonies both in my role now as the police minister and also previously when I represented the minister for police at those graduation ceremonies, I have to say that there are a significant number of women now coming through the academy. It is a huge percentage higher, I would dare say, than compared to, say, 10 years ago.

I know from my conversations with the Commissioner of Police that, as members would be aware, he is very committed to improving and eventually getting up to parity in terms of the numbers of men and women in our police force. That is obviously going to take a considerable amount of time, given the number of men we have had in our police force historically, but we are seeing more and more women coming up through the ranks of our police force.

Notably, of course, we now have our first Deputy Commissioner of Police who is a woman in Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams, who is doing a fantastic job. We want to see more and more women coming through our police force. I certainly encourage women across South Australia to look at our processes for training and recruitment of police officers and to consider that as a career in the future.