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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-16 Daily Xml
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Public Works Committee: South Australia Police Barracks Relocation—Gepps Cross

Mr BROWN (Florey) (11:22): I move:

That the 37th report of the committee, entitled South Australia Police Barracks Relocation Project—Gepps Cross, be noted.

South Australia Police (SAPOL) propose to relocate the Mounted Operations Unit and the Dog Operations Unit currently located at the Thebarton Police Barracks to a greenfield site at Gepps Cross. This relocation will enable a vacant location for the construction of the new Women's and Children's Hospital announced by the state government in September 2022.

The Thebarton Police Barracks is a multifunctional site, with the functions specialist in nature and not replicated or accommodated at any other police site. It is critical to maintain the services at the barracks to ensure continuity of emergency services provision for the South Australian public. SAPOL proposes to permanently relocate the Mounted Operations Unit and Dog Operations Unit to a site at Gepps Cross that incorporates modern facilities, associated green space in alignment with animal welfare and safety requirements, functional operative training facilities, and built form support for staff to support ongoing operational duties.

The Mounted Operations Unit consists of 36 staff members and includes 32 horses, 16 of which are required to be ready for immediate operational and public order deployment. The horses are a valuable asset used in SAPOL's operational response to protests, rallies and major events in the Adelaide CBD to move and control people and crowds.

The unit's four main functions are: public order/crowd disorder, patrol operations, search and rescue and ceremonial. The unit has an integral role in policing the Hindley Street entertainment precinct, and horses are regularly ridden to patrol the CBD areas. The Dog Operations Unit consists of general purpose and detection dog teams and are a specialist police resource, supporting operational police. Dog teams are used statewide and are trained to carry out duties that include tracking; area searching; criminal apprehension; missing person searching; and drug, currency, firearm and explosive detection.

The unit consists of 23 staff and includes 27 dogs, who are ordinarily housed with their handlers. The Dog Operations Unit requires kennels when handlers are on periods of leave or are onsite between training, operation and other duties, such as administrative duties, corporate training and fatigue duties, including cleaning animals, fleets, facilities and equipment.

SAPOL considered various factors when shortlisting a preferred site, including maintaining proximity to the city to ensure efficient deployment of the Mounted Operations Unit and the police greys, sufficient accommodation for equine and canine facilities, staff accommodation provisions, and green space for resting horses in compliance with animal work health and safety principles.

Site assessments were conducted by SAPOL in partnership with Renewal SA and the Department for Infrastructure and Transport (DIT) to establish a suitable match for the unique accommodation requirements. The site assessments further ensured adaptability of the site layout for operational fit-outs, the quality of infrastructure, location match and operational co-location of units were sufficiently addressed.

The chosen site at Gepps Cross sits at the corner of Grand Junction Road and Briens Road, and is a state government-owned vacant land parcel. Various feasibility processes and relevant geotechnical and environmental investigations were undertaken to confirm that the site is appropriate for intended construction and there are no contamination issues.

Site options near Adelaide Airport were dismissed after concerns with sound levels of planes, low-lying land, potential acid sulphate soil and the potential for PFAS at the suggested sites. The internal security device section at SAPOL has cleared the Gepps Cross site as a suitable location for operational policing premises. Construction works have commenced, with practical completion expected in early 2025.

The project delivery will follow project procurement and management advocated by the state government and construction industry authorities. DIT will project manage to a general builder contract under a managing contractor contract. This contract will engage with a selected contractor from concept design and will provide construction and planning advice to assist in driving scope and budget alignment, as well as assisting with the identification of construction efficiencies and potential project acceleration.

These initiatives will support the expedited relocation from the existing police barracks. SAPOL recognises the importance of ecologically sustainable development principles and reports that it has adopted key environmental objectives and performance criteria in the design and delivery of the project. SAPOL is committed to providing facilities with good environmental qualities to achieve good value-for-money solutions, providing a positive workplace, reducing energy and water consumption and minimising recurrent costs associated with maintaining and operating the facility. The Department for Environment and Water has assessed and approved the submission against the ecologically sustainable development guide note for planning, design and delivery.

SAPOL is aware of various operational risks and will employ their risk management policy and framework throughout the project life cycle. The project will be managed by governing bodies such as SAPOL and DIT through a five-step infrastructure planning and delivery framework. This multiagency governance framework is in place to mitigate risks and ensure that a value for money outcome is achieved, with design reviews undertaken at appropriate stages by experienced stakeholders and specialist consultants. A governance structure has also been established to ensure appropriate oversight and risk management during the planning and delivery stage.

Extensive consultation and engagement has occurred throughout the feasibility and concept planning works for the Gepps Cross Police Barracks relocation project. Notably, SAPOL has met with members of the Mounted Operations Unit and Dog Operations Unit for valuable project input. Consultation with various stakeholders will continue throughout construction works to service readiness. Communication around the site planning and logistics will be managed by SAPOL through SAPOL's communication team.

SAPOL confirms, after consultation with the Department of the Premier and Cabinet Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Unit, that there are no native title implications over the site area. Additionally, after consultation with the Department for Environment and Water, SAPOL confirms that there are no local heritage places on the site.

The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to the Gepps Cross South Australia Police Barracks relocation project. Witnesses who appeared before the committee were Assistant Commissioner Noel Bamford from SA Police; Ms Karen Kochergen, the Director of Infrastructure and Assets at SA Police; Mr Scott Bayliss, Chief Services Officer, Department of Treasury and Finance; and Mr John Harrison, the Director of Building Projects, Department for Infrastructure and Transport. I thank the witnesses for their time.

Based upon the evidence considered and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public work.

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (11:29): I rise to speak on the 37th report of the Public Works Committee entitled 'South Australia Police barracks relocation project—Gepps Cross'. I do so in the context of the entire project of the relocation of the South Australia Police barracks from what is a heritage-listed facility at Thebarton. Due to a political decision, a decision by the government that they want to move the police away from that heritage area and build a women's and children's hospital on that site, the police have been forced to make these arrangements, and the Public Works Committee is going to bring us a series of reports, not just today but in coming sitting weeks.

I was especially interested in the report's noting that the vast majority of the work that the police unit does is within the CBD. The member, when presenting the report, mentioned the body of work that is done in Hindley Street and across the CBD by the mounted units. The question that can quite rightly be asked, and is being asked by the public, is: if this work is being done in the CBD, why are the units now being moved out to Gepps Cross? It is a fair distance, logistically, for those members of the mounted unit and their operations to mobilise and get into the CBD. This is why I think this report needs to be taken in the context of the entire project.

We know, through watching this project closely over the last number of months, that the first decisions were made and SAPOL directed the government that their preference was to be in a site close to the CBD, close to where their operations are, so that they could more readily be responsive to the needs for the mounted unit within the CBD. They made recommendations to the government about locations closer. I know there were discussions around Parklands sites the government started to advance on. They decided that politically the fallout might be too great for them to bear, so they decided to look in a different spot.

The report did note that there was consideration of a site near the Adelaide Airport, or multiple sites near the Adelaide Airport. The reasons that were used by the member in presenting the report were noise—who would have thought that being near an airport there would be plane noise—acid sulphate soils and concerns around PFAS. These are all aspects which, quite rightly, should have been considered, but it is my understanding that there was not even soil sampling work done to ascertain whether there was any PFAS within that proposed site at all.

The decision was rushed at the beginning. It was rushed for a politically expedient outcome, for the government to look at an Adelaide Airport site. That got too hard for them as well, and then they landed on this site on Grand Junction Road, multiple kilometres away from the CBD, the main operation area for the mounted unit.

As far as the decision-making on this project goes, the question that really needs to be asked is: what justification does the government have for making the site at Gepps Cross their preference? Why this site above other sites? So far, the uncertainty, the murkiness and the lack of transparency around this project have been very notable. I, for one, have been disappointed with the way that police and their operations have been ignored. The concerns of the mounted unit, the concerns which have been raised from multiple angles around the operational risk of a site at Gepps Cross, continue to be ignored, as does the impact that a relocation to Gepps Cross is going to have on the mounted unit as a whole.

I, as the shadow minister for police, have been hearing from a number of concerned members of the police force, and members of the community who support the police force, about this move to Gepps Cross and the uncertainty that it creates in terms of the ongoing aspects. As I said, the different aspects of this relocation project will be aerated through some of these Public Works Committee reports. I note that there have been other reports tabled that will be discussed later on.

With a site at Gepps Cross that is so far away, there is a necessity for there to be a city staging area for the police horses as well. This is adding extra layers of complication, extra layers of operational challenge and extra layers, as has been mentioned by the member, of operational risk. I think that is unacceptable, because the police are telling the government what outcome they want and the police are being ignored.

I was interested to note that there was a mention, by the member, of value for money. This project has been given a price tag of $90 million at this point, and that is only for the Gepps Cross site in current dollars. I will be interested and watching closely as to whether this project does indeed stick to the $90 million or, as concerns around other projects have been aerated by the likes of the Auditor-General, there is a risk around escalation of costs and project blowouts because of the rushed nature of this project. I will have no surprises at all if it does indeed blow out further than the $90 million that the government is putting out at the moment, and that is not even including the cost of any other parts of the relocation, whether that is the city staging location for the horses or for some of the other relocation costs.

This project has been one that has frustrated police. It has been foisted upon them, and their perspectives have not been listened to. I have been frustrated, as the shadow minister, that the lack of transparency that this government has shown throughout this project has left too many unanswered questions. The report that has been presented to us, looking at the Gepps Cross project, has enough questions in itself, let alone in the context of the overall project to relocate the South Australia Police barracks.

The government needs to make sure that the decision that is made for this relocation is the right one, not just for short-term political gain but the right one for medium and long-term outcomes for our community safety and for our police operations as well. When I hear about concerns about operational risk and when I hear about concerns about additional operational costs, I really do question whether this government is making these decisions for the right reasons or making them for political reasons—take it from me and take it from those police who are actually coming out publicly.

I note that the man in charge of the Police Association, Mark Carroll, was certainly not backward in coming forward to say that, on behalf of his members, how frustrated they were that they were being presented a solution that seemingly was a politically motivated one to try to shore up the seat of Adelaide, rather than one that is for the betterment of the police force and for community safety. Those are not my words; they are words directly from the Police Association.

In noting the 37th report of the Public Works Committee, about the relocation of the police barracks, the horses and the dogs to Gepps Cross, I want to continue to put on the record, from my perspective, my concerns about a relocation to a site that operationally is going to have additional risks for our community, as has been aerated through this project.

Motion carried.

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