Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-03-08 Daily Xml

Contents

Police Staffing

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:39): I have a supplementary question based on the minister's answer regarding reform. Does the minister therefore support the fact that traffic police officers have been reduced over the last 12 months in South Australia Police, leaving the roads less serviced by fully operational, sworn traffic police officers?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (14:40): The honourable member asks an important question, but the honourable member does so from a position of substantial experience. Of course the honourable member, Mr Brokenshire, has been a former police minister himself, and he would understand all too well the principle of having a degree of separation between the police minister and the police commissioner when it comes to performing the function of how best to allocate resources available to him in an appropriate operational way.

The honourable member would know all too well that it is not my role to be telling the police commissioner how to do his job in an operational respect, and I have no intention of departing from that important principle—which I know the honourable member would understand and with which he would have a high degree of familiarity.