Youth and Street Gangs Task Force

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (14:47): My question is again to the Minister for Police. Will the minister resource SAPOL so that it can provide an extra 13 police to tackle youth crime? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BATTY: A government press release dated 5 February promised 'an extra 13 police officers will join the ranks of the Youth and Street Gangs Task Force'. The Commissioner of Police told the Budget and Finance Committee on 24 February that there were no extra police officers.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:48): Are we providing additional resources to South Australian police? Yes, more than $300 million of additional funding has been provided to police across our first three budgets. What is the result of that additional investment? Not only does it start making up a huge contribution to additional staffing for South Australian police, not only does it mean that the police commissioner is able to take decisions to release more frontline sworn officers onto frontline policing duties rather than conducting other roles away from frontline policing duties that you might consider to be more support-type roles, but it means that he has been able to allocate those 70 additional sworn staff to areas of greatest need for policing, as the police commissioner thinks fit.

Whether it is a Youth and Street Gangs Task Force, whether it is additional resources out in our region or whether it is additional resources to continue to fight the scourge of domestic violence, these are the decisions that the police commissioner is now able to make because of how this government has stepped up police resourcing.

I know that the member for Bragg has called that a smokescreen; I know that he has criticised those moves. It is remarkable that when those opposite were in government and they imposed $50 million worth of cuts to the SAPOL budget, that when we are doing the opposite—when we are stepping up police resourcing, when we are allocating funding to recruit more staff to SAPOL to enable the police commissioner to allocate more sworn officers onto frontline duties, when we are stepping up our recruitment efforts not only to speed up recruitment but to try to plug the gap left in sworn police officer numbers by those opposite—they continue to criticise these moves. I find it absolutely remarkable.

I have explained it now twice: there are more police on the beat as a result of this decision. Operation Mandrake and Operation Meld are brought together into this new task force. Rather than having to take frontline sworn officers away from other duties in other service areas, that no longer has to happen. If that is not an unalloyed good thing for South Australia Police and for community safety, then I can't imagine what might be. It beggars belief that those opposite continue to criticise these changes.

This government will continue making the investments and continue reforming the laws that are necessary to ensure that we can continue protecting the community. That is the responsibility of government. We are making substantial progress. The Premier made reference before to crime statistics. I had to go through this in another portfolio, the Treasury portfolio, with the former shadow Treasurer when he was asking about basic statistics. It is difficult for some people opposite, but if those opposite can find Google and they can type in ABS.gov, they can see the statistics when it comes to youth crime and they will see that there has been a 17 per cent reduction in the most recent crime statistics published by the ABS on their website.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia: Cherrypicking.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The Leader of the Opposition says that the ABS is cherrypicking data. So now we have moved off the police commissioner and we are criticising the independent statutory organisation responsible for collecting statistics. Is there no limit to the depth to which they will stoop?