Youth and Street Gangs Task Force

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (14:38): My question is to the Minister for Police. Have any additional police officers been allocated to the new Youth and Street Gangs Task force and, if so, how many? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BATTY: A government press release on 5 February 2025 stated:

The existing Operation Meld and Operation Mandrake initiatives will merge and an extra 13 police officers will join their ranks.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:38): I am very pleased to update the house, because this press release that the member quotes from was a press release that I put out as police minister celebrating the decision taken by the police commissioner to allocate a further 70 sworn officers into frontline policing. The immediate response from those opposite, in particular the fledgling member for Bragg, was to label the police commissioner's moves as 'a smokescreen'.

Now, yes, the police commissioner has taken the decision because—and I know that the fledgling member for Bragg won't be familiar with such things relevant to parliamentarians as legislation or the Police Act or the separation between police and the legislature, but section 6 of the Police Act is quite specific: that it is up to the police commissioner to allocate resources for operational purposes and not up to the police minister of the day.

So this was a decision taken by the police commissioner to take these resources allocated by the government—and look, I understand policing is a laughing matter for those opposite. I understand that the member for Schubert simply refuses to accept the facts of the decline of sworn officer numbers over the course of the last Marshall Liberal government when she was a chief adviser to the former Premier, but that is the reality.

When we are investing additional resources into police to release an extra 70 officers and enable the police commissioner to bring together Operation Meld and Operation Mandrake into this new combined task force, the fact is that there will be 13 officers extra on frontline services on the beat as a result of that, and they will be split across operational areas, including the Eastern District LSA. What was previously happening, as the police commissioner has articulated on talkback radio and in a Budget and Finance Committee and in other public forums, this move means that there are more sworn officers on frontline duties than there were previously.

Now that may offend the fledgling member for Bragg. He might take umbrage with that and he's constantly playing catch-up. He's constantly playing catch-up with this. He has realised the folly of criticising legitimate moves made by the police commissioner. He has realised the folly of rushing out and suggesting law reforms which are then immediately criticised as being unworkable by the police commissioner. This is the record of those opposite, so it's no wonder that when the government yet again, yet again today, makes a commitment to further toughen laws, in addition to the more than 30 pieces of legislative reform that we have taken, that we get this sort of snarky criticism from the member for Bragg.

Now I am pleased that after so long getting into the parliamentary year, finally he's getting a question, finally law and order and community safety is being thought of by those opposite, finally after we have had two full weeks of the Leader of the Opposition criticising the government for stepping in to save the steelworks at Whyalla—finally, finally, the fledgling member for Bragg is having a go. But I have got to say, it's a bit juvenile to keep criticising our police and our police commissioner.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Bragg, that was pretty much four minutes of you yelling out, and if you want to ask more questions it's going to be easier to ask them from in here rather than in the sin-bin. The member for Morphett was getting quite loud there as well.