HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-02-06 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Police Ramping

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:28): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question to the Attorney-General, representing the Minister for Police, about police officers being ramped at hospitals.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: In a report by the ABC News on 14 January 2025, police spent thousands of hours being ramped at hospitals last financial year while transporting prisoners or mental health patients. According to new data, police were delayed for a total of 1,264 hours in 2023-24, an increase of 597 hours from the 2019-20 financial year. SA Police also confirmed there had been a significant increase in demand on officers from the number of mental health incidents over the past five years, with a police spokesperson stating that:

…the number of SAPOL detained mental health presentations to emergency departments has increased 116 per cent in the last five years…[and that] the average delay…has increased 7 per cent over the same period.

My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. Does the Attorney-General believe that the number of hours police officers are being delayed while waiting at hospitals is a suitable use of policing resources?

2. What action plans will the government implement to prevent police officers being excessively ramped at hospitals?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:30): I thank the honourable member for her question. It is a very good question. I will, of course, refer the specific question she has asked to my ministerial colleague in another place the Hon. Stephen Mullighan, the Minister for Police. I will note that we have just seen this week the police commissioner—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: —make some very substantial announcements about how police resources are deployed to continue to keep South Australians as safe as possible.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT