Question Time

Community Safety

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:05): My question is to the Premier. What action, if any, is the Premier taking to keep South Australians safe? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: At the moment, South Australians are waking up nearly daily to news of violent home invasions by gangs of youths, random assaults in the CBD and Molotov cocktails flying around our streets and suburbs.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:06): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Obviously, the state government has continued to increase its investment in policing resources more broadly in a number of respects. I will speak to two. The first is in terms of police numbers themselves. We currently have a situation, because of the strength of the labour market in the state, that police are not able to recruit to their fully funded level. It has proven to be particularly problematic. The number, I think from memory, is 4,713, is the fully funded number, or something to that effect, of South Australia Police.

What we have sought to do to aid South Australia Police to be able to get up to the fully funded number of police is to dramatically accelerate recruitment efforts, to invest in recruitment efforts, which the government has done rather aggressively, particularly in the most recent two state budgets. If we are able to get police numbers up to their fully funded number, that means more police on the beat and that would be obviously a resoundingly good thing.

The second element is to increase the number of police, the proportion of police, that are actually out on the frontline doing the work day in, day out. One of the policies the government has pursued and enacted and invested in, at considerable expense to the budget, is to get more PSOs out on the ground that relieve police to be able to do other frontline work that is particularly committed to keeping people safe. We are recruiting in excess—I think from memory again it's over 150 extra PSOs to go out there and do that work. That is a policy the government has pursued in conjunction with the police commissioner.

More recently, beyond the budgets themselves, I have been very grateful, as people would expect, to have a good working relationship with the Commissioner of Police. He has continued to keep me abreast of the challenges that exist within SAPOL around not just recruitment and retention but also the challenge that SAPOL are confronting, particularly as the nature of police work has changed so quickly. One example would be particularly around domestic violence. The volume of call-outs that police are now attending to in respect of domestic violence disputes has escalated dramatically. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not that is any function of just more domestic violence or whether or not there is a heartening sign that people are having the courage to report domestic violence in the first instance so that it can be responded to.

Regardless, the burden on police is substantial, particularly as means and methods available to South Australia Police to professionally deal with domestic violence have become more sophisticated but then also more burdensome and complex in terms of the work or the pressures they place on SAPOL themselves. These are things that we want to work with police to alleviate where we can. To go down that path, of course, the domestic violence royal commission hopefully will only aid that effort.

We are working closely with South Australia Police. I think South Australia Police have shown an increasing degree of agility, to their great credit, to respond to areas of concern as they emerge. We saw that in Rundle Mall, we have seen that in Hindley Street and there are other examples as well. With more time, I could talk to you about the news that came out overnight of the initiative being led by the Attorney-General in conjunction with the police minister in respect to the declaration of a precinct in and around the CBD, which gives the police more powers to be able to keep the community safe.