South Australia Police

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:33): My question is to the Minister for Police. Can the minister update the house on state government investment in South Australia Police?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:34): It is a pleasure to receive this question from the member for Torrens, who, of course, is keenly focused on what the government is doing to step up resourcing to South Australia Police and, in particular, what we have done over the last three years. Mr Speaker, as you would remember from previous information I provided to the house, this government has committed more than $300 million in extra resourcing to South Australia Police across our first budgets. That also includes a significant amount of money to both recruit additional staff and step up our recruitment processes and advertising to get more sworn officers onto frontline duties, to get more police onto the beat.

The good news is that that is already paying dividends. The police commissioner made an announcement some weeks ago that this additional funding has allowed him to allocate a further 70 sworn officers onto frontline duties. This is really important because in June 2018, shortly after the 2018 election, there were 4,678 sworn officers in South Australia. At the same time four years later, in June 2022, after they had been in government for four years, there were 144 sworn officers less—less.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: COVID. The Leader of the Opposition says, 'That's okay, it's COVID.' But he also talks about—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Premier and the Leader of the Opposition, if you want to have the debate, maybe just step out the back for five minutes and then come back in.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It has fallen to this government to step up resourcing for South Australia Police to start plugging the gaps left by those opposite after they were in government for four years. I am pleased to advise that our recruitment efforts continue.

This week, as we were gathering here in parliament, we had our first graduation of international and national police recruits from different parts of the world and different parts of the country as part of our international and interstate transition program, a key feature of a program that the member for Cheltenham sponsored to ensure that we could step up recruitment to plug the gap that the Liberals had left in our police force. I am really pleased that 13 of those 15 have come from overseas, in particular from England and Scotland.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Apparently, this causes umbrage with those opposite; you don't have to scratch deep for the xenophobia, apparently. I am really pleased that we have police from overseas, from Dorset Police, Police Scotland, West Midlands Police and Durham police. We also have police from New Zealand as well as Queensland, underlining how attractive it is for people to come from around the world, from across the Tasman and from other parts of the country, to join South Australia Police.

The reason why is not only do people think that this is a great place to live and that there is, after a long time, a sense of momentum in this state but they can obviously see that this is a police force that is getting investment and getting support from the government for the first time in a significant period of time after police numbers diminished so much under the term of the previous Liberal government.