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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-05-06 Daily Xml
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POLICE PLANE

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:06): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Police a question about the police plane.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS: Members may or may not be aware that, currently, the police plane takes officers to the APY lands and serves the north of the state, including Coober Pedy and other remote areas, on a weekly basis. It is a vital service when you consider the driving time that it takes to get to some of these areas from Adelaide. The plane is a PC 12 model, which carries 12 people.

Sadly, the opposition has been advised that the service may no longer be available for one week out of every four, and, supposedly, this reduction in service is a cost saving measure. This becomes particularly interesting when you consider that relief staff are flown in and out of the APY lands for a week at a time. The question must be asked about what happens to these fly-in relief police staff (as police refer to them) after they have completed their one-week shift but must stay on the lands for another week before the plane returns.

To put it into perspective, the drive to the APY lands takes something in the order of more than 16 hours—and they tell me that 16 hours is a particularly good trip. My questions are:

1. Does the minister realise that the situation will seriously inhibit recruitment, both permanent and relief, to positions on the lands?

2. Is this measure being considered because of budgetary pressures being exerted by the minister himself?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Police, Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning) (15:07): Under this government, South Australia Police has never had bigger budgets. Every year, the police budget has been increased by more than CPI; it is significantly better.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Yes; that's right. It really does require incredible gall from members opposite when their solution to save costs was to have no police at all. There were no police at all on the APY lands when the member's party was in government. Today we have a report tabled by commissioner Mullighan. This government, as a result of its concerns in 2004, has put police back on the lands, and, as I announced today, there will be an extra eight police going into the APY lands. On top of that, three other officers will deal specifically with sexual abuse.

What gall members opposite have, because not only did they reduce the police presence on the lands to zero—there were no police at all—but they also would not allow a parliamentary committee to travel up there to have a look at the situation. Their solution to the APY lands problems was to keep everybody out of it, to do nothing, to keep out the police and parliamentarians—keep everybody out. What you cannot see you obviously are not aware of.

This government bought the police a new Polatis plane, but there are also other aircraft in the police fleet. As a result of the government's decision to increase the number of police on the lands, part of budget considerations will be to ensure that there is additional accommodation for police on the lands. I congratulate the Rudd government for providing significant amounts of commonwealth government money, which my colleague Jay Weatherill negotiated with the federal government, to provide police facilities on the land. Obviously, with the additional police up there, we will need more money to service the police officers in that area. I am sure that that will be forthcoming. So, the honourable member need have no fears whatsoever about this government supporting the police of this state, in terms of the equipment they need or in terms of their salaries.

Another thing that was pointed out in Commissioner Mullighan's report was that, in the last enterprise bargaining agreement for the police in 2007, one of the things that we did was to increase the attractiveness for police officers to move to these remote areas. It is difficult to recruit police into those areas, but one of the things that this government delivered in the most recent enterprise bargaining with police was greatly improved conditions to attract police officers to those remote areas of the state. So, the honourable member can rest assured that this government is looking after the APY lands in a way that was not done by the previous government.

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