Police Staffing

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:33): Supplementary to the minister's answers: how can the minister say that he is increasing police resources and budgeting every year when in excess of $150 million of cuts are facing SAPOL? The second part is: does the minister agree that this review is in large part due to these cuts and the problems the commissioner is having with his budget?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (14:33): I thank the honourable member for his question. I would have thought that the honourable member would have been aware of the fact that the police commissioner himself has been repeatedly on the record in recent weeks making it very clear that SAPOL's organisational review is in no way due to any decision of government in regard to its budget.

The police commissioner has indeed confirmed, along with information from Treasury, that SAPOL does not even fully expend all the budget that is currently available to it, which is evidence within itself that this has nothing to do with the budget and everything to do with the police commissioner exercising his duty, his important function to make sure that we are increasing community safety by ensuring that we have a modern, efficient, productive South Australian police force, albeit with increasing resources supplied by this Labor government.