Police numbers

Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — Motion 327, moved by Mr O'Donohue, raises important issues, and like many motions moved in this chamber, while the general substance of the issues can be supported, often the way the motion is worded can be very provocative. While listening to the various contributions that have been made to this motion, I would say it has been characterised by claim and counterclaim with regard to police numbers generally and their deployment across the state under this government and the previous government. So there is a lot of defending of patch going on with regard to this motion, even though the substance of the motion, as I said, is very important and is an important issue for the community.

Despite a number of government members having spoken, including the last one, Mr Melhem, none has given a definitive answer to the points that are raised about police numbers by Mr O'Donohue's motion. The first point that he raises in his motion, which has seven points, is that since 2014 the number of frontline, first-responder police has been cut by 115. This statistic comes from Police Association Victoria but has been denied by the police minister, and the Chief Commissioner of Police also says there have been no cuts to frontline police officers. So it is very difficult to get to the bottom of that when you have the opposition, or Mr O'Donohue, saying one thing, the police association saying that same thing and the police minister and Chief Commissioner of Police saying another.

It is not always as straightforward as it might seem to actually get to the bottom of the number of police at any given time compared to the number of police at a former time and whether in fact, as Mr Melhem was talking about, it is natural attrition and changes to the way the police commissioner may deploy police officers in terms of special task forces, different units et cetera and in police stations and on patrols. It is very hard to necessarily get to the bottom of what are determined frontline responder police.

However, the state government also said, and various speakers today have pointed to the fact, that the government has fast-tracked the deployment of more than 400 new police officers, 300 of those being called first responders. The police association is saying it wants an extra 3300 police officers by 2022 to keep up with population growth. Mr O'Donohue's motion states that the population of Victoria is growing by more than 100 000 per year, and that is correct. So clearly we will need more police, however we describe them. We will need more police personnel to keep up with population growth, just as we will need more ambulance officers, just as we will need more teachers and just as we will need more doctors, nurses and other public servants. So police are not alone in needing more numbers in their ranks, so to speak.

A lot of the information comes from the police association. I am very respectful of the survey that was done by the police association of its 329 senior sergeants, and it is very interesting reading to see the results of that survey. The reason I say I am respectful of it is that I am respectful of an organisation like the police association surveying its members. The senior sergeants are the people running the police stations, and they know what confronts the police every day of the week in terms of the issues that they have to deal with on a daily basis. Certainly when I worked in the union movement I commissioned a very large number of surveys of various workforces to find out what they were experiencing in terms of stress, in terms of working hours, in terms of bullying at work et cetera, and you certainly do get the information from the people on the ground.

From the survey they are saying that population growth has outstripped the ability of the police to meet calls for assistance. Some of the statistics from their survey — and they were all senior sergeants — revealed that more than 80 per cent of them say the increased workload that they are under is due to understaffing. Nearly 30 per cent of them said they lost 50 shifts every fortnight due to staff shortages. That sounds like a lot of shifts to me.

That may be an average figure; it would depend on the size of the station, for example, whether that would apply in each station. Senior sergeants in charge of general duties stations say they are struggling to get vans on the road, with 84 per cent of them saying that jobs regularly go unattended. This is where the figure of priority 1 jobs being held up for 1 hour or more comes from; they are saying that is because of resources shortages, and the senior sergeants connect the shortage in police resources to population growth, the effects of secondment and task force policing.

The figures that the police association have provided to the community from their survey do make for sobering reading and do make the case; that is where that priority 1 jobs figure is coming from. However, I did hear that the police commissioner responded to that on ABC radio a couple days ago, and I think he made the point that not all of them were being held up for 1 hour. What the survey is showing, and this is my reading of the survey, is that a large number — 26 per cent, or about a quarter — are being held up but not all for 1 hour. Some are being held up for 1 hour, and that is a concern. I saw some of the examples there where senior sergeants mentioned particular types of incidents that were priority incidents and that they had to prioritise between priorities, and that is understood.

I have talked about the first three points in Mr O'Donohue's motion collectively there. His fifth point goes to the issue of communities taking to forming citizens patrols across Melbourne as a result of lack of police. That is certainly what is happening in some areas, including in the Melbourne CBD area, even though there has been a decrease in crime in the CBD area according to the Crime Statistics Agency. Of course all the speakers that I have heard so far — Mr O'Donohue and other speakers, including Dr Carling-Jenkins and speakers from the government — have agreed with what the chief commissioner has said to warn against people forming these types of groups because they are only putting themselves at risk in doing that, and if they see crime or are victims of crime, they should be calling the police, not trying to solve those crimes themselves.

The sixth point is that total crime in Victoria has decreased by 13.4 per cent. That is a correct figure from the Crime Statistics Agency, but there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with regard to what the figures actually mean. While the Crime Statistics Agency in fact says that 65 per cent of the increase was due to rising theft, the Victorian deputy commissioner of police, Andrew Crisp, said that a third of all those thefts are related to thefts to and from cars, and most of those are unoccupied cars. Also there is a bit of a racket going on — they were not his words; they are my words — where numberplates are being stolen to evade the police or evade tolls or to use in petrol drive-offs and some other crimes. The number of aggravated burglaries in relation to the overall burglary number is quite low, so those opposite in the Liberal Party in particular have been playing up the aggravated burglary side of theft, whereas the crime stats — —

Honourable members interjecting.

Ms PENNICUIK — I am sorry if I misspoke that. Both parties, really, if you really want to put it that way, are exaggerating the number of aggravated burglaries that are being reported by the Crime Statistics Agency and by the police. When you look at the breakdown of those crimes you see it is not to the extent that is being said by the government and the opposition in this regard. Also, it is worth noting that the family violence statistics make up a large part of the rise in crime, and a lot of that is due to increased reporting of those crimes and an increased focus on those crimes. Of course they are a serious blight on our community, and we are all hopefully trying to work towards reducing that particular type of crime.

The last point is 'behind every crime is a victim'. Of course that is the case, and behind every crime there could be more than one victim. The motion 'calls on the government to deliver the resources that Victoria Police urgently need to tackle this crime tsunami'. Terms like 'crime tsunami' are not very helpful. We are not having a crime tsunami in Victoria. It is not helpful for members of Parliament to run around the community trying to make people feel as if they are living in a crime tsunami when they are not living in a crime tsunami. It does behove people to put things in perspective — that is what I am trying to do — and say that, yes, police numbers, as with other essential public services, do need to keep up with population growth, of course, but we do not need to be unduly worrying the community even though nobody is saying there are not serious crimes being committed. I would be saying that we are not in a crime tsunami.

I would also like to say with regard to this particular motion that I have not heard anybody talk about the other side of it, which is crime prevention.

Mr O'Donohue — I did.

Ms PENNICUIK — Thank you, Mr O'Donohue, I must have missed that, but I have not heard anyone else. We are of the view that this debate needs to incorporate a wider perspective and talk about the approach that we need to take to address crime, including acknowledging the importance of embracing things like justice reinvestment initiatives.

There have been some presentations just this year in Parliament House regarding the success of the justice reinvestment approach in the United States in reducing the crime rate. It means less money is spent on detention in prisons, less of a need to increase police numbers and increased investment in specialist and problem-solving courts and community-based initiatives that address the causes of offending in the first place and can interrupt offending cycles. So greater investment in rehabilitation programs, health and education and investment in employment programs, particularly in the areas of more vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, would make those communities and the rest of the community more safe. That is the other side that we should be looking at. Rather than just looking at the law enforcement side, we should be looking at the community-based approaches of justice reinvestment and rehabilitation of offenders, particularly young offenders.

In fact, if you look at the crime statistics, you will see that overall commission of offences by young people has fallen. In fact that is the area where crime offending has fallen, except for a very small cohort of repeat offenders, which has been identified by legal aid as around about 500 repeat offenders. But over the general population of young people the offending of that group has fallen, not risen. But that is not the impression that you get from hearing a lot of the contributions by MPs. It is a small proportion of young offenders that are responsible for a disproportionate number of crimes. They are the comments I wanted to make on Mr O'Donohue's motion today.