Grievance Debate

Minister for Police

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (15:21): I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak to the performance of our police minister. When we think about the role and the responsibility that the Minister for Police has in this state, it is incredibly substantial. First and foremost, the Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services, and for Recreation and Sport, serves as a leader of the people who work under his area of responsibility.

When one reflects on the police officers who serve our state with dignity, corrections officers, firefighters and emergency services volunteers, there is one common thing that we expect of all people who wear those uniforms, and that is a responsibility to act with grace under pressure. When any of those men and women wear those uniforms in this state to keep our community safe, they do so knowing that they have to be able to deliver grace under pressure.

What we have witnessed here today is the exact opposite from their leader. He is a man who, at the first sign of pressure today in question time, decided to resort to personal attacks on members opposite who did nothing more than seek to ask very elementary questions about how the minister is going to go about delivering on the election commitments that he and his government took to the last election.

I am going to cut the police minister just a modicum of slack and note that it is not the current police minister who is the architect of the debacle that he is now trying to fix up. The architects of the debacle that is now being cleaned up, or attempted to be cleaned up, by the Minister for Police are indeed the member for Schubert, the Premier and, of course, the other said members opposite who sought to exploit community concern in their neighbourhoods around police station opening hours. I refer to the members for Morphett and Colton because they went to the last election promising to extend police station opening hours and so far what have we seen? No change, no change whatsoever and no plan about how they are going to implement that change.

Alarmingly, this morning, live on ABC radio we heard the Acting Commissioner of Police reveal exactly what it is that SAPOL is thinking regarding the government's policy. These are just some of the remarks that the acting police commissioner made in regard to the Liberal Party's policy:

We're quite clear about why we arrived at the position that we've arrived at. Obviously the government has come up with their policy position and the police department and the police commissioner…is authorised to use his resources to fulfil the obligations under the Police Act and that's what we're doing.

Another quote:

…most of our policing resources don't come out of the bricks and mortar. They're in patrol cars or they're on the end of a phone…

Another quote: 'Sitting in a police station is waiting and responding.' Not solving crimes, not preventing crimes, but sitting waiting and responding. Asked directly by David Bevan this morning on 891 radio:

Because the South Australian police disagree with the Liberal policy of opening the Henley Beach police station from 8am until 11pm?

At this point, the Acting Commissioner of Police had the opportunity to make it very clear that there is no disagreement between the police commissioner's office and the government. What was the response?

We've said based on our analysis that [the district policing model hours] were the optimum times for service delivery and we were better placed to take resources from some stations and put them back to the front line.

That sounds like a senior SAPOL officer knowing what they are doing, struggling with the fact that we have a government and a police minister who have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Let me give you a hot tip, Mr Speaker: not too many crimes are committed in the reception area of police stations.

Crimes happen out in the community, and what the community wants—including in the area for which the member for Morphett has responsibility—is more police officers on the beat, to be looked after by police officers, not sitting behind a counter but, instead, out on the beat protecting our community.

Time expired.