The Police Association’s highly regarded team of office-holders faced its voters in the recent elections for presidents, secretary and eight other committee members.

Each official stood for re-election, except former deputy president, Nick Pippos, and former committee member, Iain Robertson. Both had retired from their respective positions at the end of the last term.

Peter Alexander, the association’s longest-serving president, won re-election to his office, unopposed, for the fourth time. Secretary Andy Dunn, also unchallenged, won his second re-election.

Long-time committee member and former vice-president, Trevor Haskell, won the office of deputy president, after he stood for the position unopposed.

Committee members, Sergeant Jim Tappin, Detective Sergeant Mick Standing, Sergeant Bernadette Zimmermann and Senior Constable Trevor Milne ran for the vice-presidential seat vacated by Mr Haskell. In one of the association’s closest-ever contests, Sgt Zimmermann emerged the winner.

Those who ran for vice-president also stood – along with colleagues, Sergeant Barbara Parfitt, Senior Constable David “Bully” Reynolds and Sergeant Rick Day – for re-election to standard committee positions. Electors returned each candidate to office.

Sergeants Liz McGregor and Allan Cannon, and Senior Sergeant Karen Robinson, stood for election as non-committee candidates.

Of these three, Sergeants McGregor and Cannon won election to the two vacant committee positions.

Another female
- after 21 years

Sergeant Bernadette Zimmermann has become just the second woman in the 94-year history of the Police Association to win the office of vice-president. The 41-year-old full-time police officer, unionist, wife and mother of four defeated second-placed Detective Sergeant Mick Standing by only three votes in the recent association elections.

Sgt Zimmermann, who competed for the position against three fellow committee members, felt particularly lucky to have emerged the winner by such a small margin. But the victory also struck her as a great honour, and one which would bring her “a new responsibility”.

“It means a lot to me to be in the position of vice-president on the committee that looks after members’ benefits and conditions of service,” she says. “And it means something in my heart, because my whole family has been tied up in policing for a very long time.

“My great-grandfather, Michael Carroll, worked in SAPOL in the mid-1800s. In fact, he was charged for something along the lines of talking while on duty and fined quite a bit of money.”

Sgt Zimmermann sees the key industrial issue facing association members as that of understaffing, and its impact on safety. She asks rhetorically how many back-up staff are in place to support front-line officers who respond to community crises.

“Members think about that every single day,” she says, “because it’s a problem every single day. But the main thing is about how hard our job is now. We are working longer and harder.

“There is a lot of intensification in the police occupation now, and I don’t think it’s being picked up by our management.”

And, to help unburden police officers from these industrial hardships, Sgt Zimmermann seems prepared, when necessary, to immerse herself in some classic no-holds-barred industrial brawling.

To her, a union representative who fails to take an industrial fight to his or her membership’s adversary serves no purpose in office.

So, be it open brawls or more subtle acts of representation that lie ahead for Sgt Zimmermann, she remains excited to continue working with a “very sharp and experienced” association committee.

“It’s a very good time to come in as vice-president because of that experience base,” she says.

“I respect all the committee members, especially (President) Peter Alexander and all he has achieved for our members. I’m very keen to be working with him from this new angle.”

Sgt Zimmermann has taken up the vice-presidency with seven years’ experience as an association committee member.

Her police career began in 1981, when she joined SAPOL as a 17-year-old. After she graduated in 1983, she served as an Adelaide patrol officer before a six-year stint in Port Augusta.

Back in Adelaide, she worked as a prosecutor and, later, a Hindley St youth officer.

In recent years, she has worked as a City Watch House sergeant and an Adelaide patrols supervisor.

Few women have ever held deputy- or vice-presidential positions in Australian police unions. Kathryn Finnegan became the first in SA, where she won the junior vice-presidency of the Police Association in 1984.

Anne-Marie Murphy took charge of the Northern Territory Police Association in 1993, when she became the nation’s first female police union president.

In October last year, women came to occupy two presidential positions in the Police Association (Victoria). Snr Sgt Janet Mitchell won office as president, while her colleague, Debbie Robertson, became junior vice-president.

Sgt Zimmermann’s motivation to run for such high office came from her long-time membership of the Police Federation of Australia Women’s Advisory Committee.

A chief objective of the committee has been to bolster female representation in police unions throughout Australia and New Zealand. And PFAWAC members have long seen women as particularly under-represented in the unions’ highest positions.

But, even as third in the line of presidents of her association, Sgt Zimmermann does not consider herself a trailblazer for female police unionists in SA. “Because,” she says, “there’s already been a woman in this position before me; and because I just don’t feel like a trailblazer.

“(But) I am glad that I am there (as vice-president), so that other women can know that they, too, can put their hands up for these sorts of positions.”

The 2004 election of friend and Police Association (Victoria) president, Janet Mitchell, also inspired Sgt Zimmermann to run for office. So, too, did her “heart feeling about looking after members”, to whom she feels especially close.

Irrespective of perceived closeness, however, she knows her four-year term will come with the scrutiny and criticism of a sometimes unforgiving clientele. But she sees that up-front input from members as “expected” and “proper”.

“We should be encouraging it, because we need to know what members are thinking and what they want,” she says. “It really doesn’t worry me, because it’s never nasty criticism – it’s nearly always people with genuine concerns.”

To Sgt Zimmermann, the drawn-out election process, which led to her victory, came as much more nerve-racking than the prospect of tough criticism. Each day – in the two-week ballot of late March – thoughts about how well she might have been polling raced through her mind.

And just as thoughts of incoming votes were nerve-racking for her, so, too, was the knowledge that she could lose.

Despite her range of commitments as a mother and police officer – including a recent transfer from Adelaide to Nuriootpa – Sgt Zimmermann does not expect her vice-presidential role to over-burden her.

She sees it as a natural extension of her committee position, and expects to play a bigger part in the association’s decision-making processes.

“A lot of us have full-time jobs,” she says. “We work things so that they fit with our family lives, and the things we want to achieve in our personal lives and careers. So I don’t think it (the vice-president’s job) is a burden.”

Through her term, Sgt Zimmermann hopes to help bring about greater recognition for police officers and their work.

“And, knowing about their work intensification and lack of resources,” she says, “I want to achieve something that has an obvious impact on that.”

Rising to another challenge

Some in the business world have to fight to stay awake at their boardroom tables when discussion turns to the more mundane agenda items. But newly elected committee member, Sergeant Liz McGregor, cannot see herself as anything but bright-eyed and enthralled at boardroom meetings of the Police Association over the next four years.

The 47-year-old spoke of her enthusiasm for internal dialogue after she had attended just one association conference and two fortnightly committee meetings.

“There’s no way I’d be able to go to sleep in one of them,” she says. “They’re very interesting and vital meetings, as are the issues (discussed). And I love the way people bounce off each other.”

Sgt McGregor received word that she had won a seat on the committee in a phone call from Police Association secretary, Andy Dunn, as she holidayed in Queensland. She told him she was “absolutely rapt” to know of her victory.

And, now, after two months in her new role, she still finds the prospect of a four-year term on the committee as “exciting” and “terrific”.

Through her long friendships with now Deputy President Trevor Haskell and Treasurer Mick Standing, Sgt McGregor had understood well the workings of the committee. With that grounding, and her experience of 26 years in SAPOL, she had felt drawn to the battle for a position at the table.

“I thought I had something to offer,” she says. “I’ve been around for long enough, and I’ve had such a varied career.

“I thought a lot of people were aware of my existence – I wasn’t someone who just comes out of nowhere. I thought maybe people could identify with me.

“And I liked the thought that the committee is a group of people who at least the majority of the membership can identify with. They are individuals who they (members) have had some contact with, or they know.”

The Police Association’s full-time leadership team served as another “big attraction” to Sgt McGregor to run for office. She even suggests that, in its absence, she might not have found herself drawn to stand.

Her victory brought her a deep sense of her new responsibility, as well as cause to reflect on an e-mail she had received from a voter during pre-election campaigning. He had queried the then aspiring committee member about an issue in connection with the association’s recent enterprise agreement.

“I could see that getting an e-mail from a person whom I’d never met said it all (about responsibility),” she says. “I also imagine that people will have an expectation of me to have a reasonably good knowledge of things, so I imagine myself with a lot of learning to get through.”

And Sgt McGregor expects to serve her term before the ever-scrutinizing eyes of those she represents. Her “26 years in the job”, however, give her confidence to deal with their criticism, be it polite or abrasive.

While the demands of her new role are many, they seem unlikely to overwhelm Sgt McGregor. She has taken her seat in the boardroom with a well-documented history of rising to challenges.

Diagnosed with chronic renal failure in 1980, she suffered the complete breakdown of her kidneys in 1989. She had joined SAPOL just 10 years earlier and worked with Adelaide patrols, the Gaming Squad, Holden Hill CIB, the Drug Squad and Adelaide CIB.

But, now, she would have to undergo dialysis treatment for 12 months with only the support of her friends, as her siblings lived interstate and British migrant parents were dead.

After a failed kidney transplant operation in 1990, Sgt McGregor suffered immense physical and psychological pain. She summoned enough inner-strength, however, to stay positive until the next year, when surgeons attempted another transplant.

That operation succeeded, and doctors described the kidney as a good match. They suggested it would last for up to 30 years.

Sgt McGregor not only continued to work – at Fort Largs and in Welfare Branch and IIB – but also competed in the Transplant Games in Manchester in 1995.

She contributed to projects such as the GRN, and took up her current post, Communications Branch, in 2003.

The most important industrial issues to her are those of staffing, employee retention, human-resource policies and equity. Too many HR policies, she insists, fail to reflect need.

“Some of the equity things are just so unwieldy that they fly in the face of what they’re trying to achieve,” she explains. “Someone who’s a victim doesn’t want to have to deal with all this bullshit to get some sort of satisfaction.

“And general orders that we’re supposed to abide by are not kept up to date. That is my big thing: procedures, general orders, policies that are just inappropriate and non-reflective of needs.”

As a committee member, Sgt McGregor hopes to bring a liberal amount of lateral thinking – in which she insists women excel – to the boardroom. But the self-described left-field thinker intends, when necessary, to take a conservative line.

“It’s good to have a bit of a mixture,” she says, “and I’m really confident I can do that quite adequately.”

Undaunted as representative of 4,000

It is no surprise that new committee member, Sergeant Allan Cannon, wants to talk about getting more cops into “ground-level work”. He has sometimes seen police coverage for the entire Elizabeth area amount to just one supervisor and three patrol officers.

Himself an Elizabeth patrol supervisor, Sgt Cannon has also seen his station’s front office and cell block staffed with more officers than those on the streets. To the 45-year-old with 23 years’ police experience, this is “an inappropriate way” for police to fight crime and disorder.

“SAPOL works on statistics,” he says. “We (at the association) work on the safety and security of our membership. We should have more people on the ground in operational areas, but I can also see the importance of having non-operational areas fully staffed as well.”

So minimum staffing levels, as well as selection processes and inequities in police superannuation, are just some issues in which Sgt Cannon intends to involve himself deeply at the boardroom table. There, he expects, by virtue of his personal experience of country and remote policing, and knowledge of many other fields, to be a worthy contributor and representative.

But the husband and father of three adult daughters remembers well the nights he spent “on edge” during the two-week voting stage of the election in March. His wife, Lesley – to whom he pays tribute for her support – had warned him not to expect success in his first bid for a committee seat.

Delight soon replaced his edginess when he got the same good-news call that Sergeants Zimmermann and McGregor had received from Andy Dunn.

But within an instant after his elation came an overwhelming sense of commitment to “do the best I can (in the role)”.

“It was the realization that I’m now one of a handful of people representing the membership of nearly 4,000 people,” he says. “I was pretty happy with that. I’m not daunted by it. I’m keen and ready to participate.”

A former branch president and conference delegate, Sgt Cannon spoke of his election to office as “just taking that next step” as a committed association worker. And he had always understood that the job would require him to sacrifice much of his private time and apply his energy.

He has already begun to pore over reading material the association has sent to his home, and somehow made time for his raft of new responsibilities. “Then, of course, there are the meetings,” he says, “but they’re part and parcel of any form of management.

“With PASA, we’re in the job of making sure that coppers are looked after, and that’s important. They put their trust in us (the committee) to represent them, and I love that.”

The son of factory workers, Sgt Cannon grew up in Port Adelaide and Mansfield Park, and attended Woodville High School. Fiercely proud of his working-class background, he joined his father at GMH, where he worked to qualify as a motor mechanic.

But, in 1982, he left his trade to join SAPOL as a married 22-year-old. After he graduated in 1983, he served as an Adelaide patrol officer for two years, and then transferred to Holden Hill patrols.

Through the late 1980s and the ’90s, Sgt Cannon furthered his police career with country service – in Port Augusta, Coober Pedy and Port Pirie – before he returned to metropolitan Adelaide.

His first active role with the Police Association came in Port Pirie in 1995, when he served as a proxy for then delegate Kym Wilson. He asserts that what he has learned of “the art of communication” over the last 10 years will help him respond to criticisms he knows will come from members.

“Sure I’ll get criticized about things that are happening or not happening,” he says. “So communication’s important – knowing what to say and when to say it.”

Meanwhile, after only two months’ service, Sgt Cannon speaks of loving his new job. He also describes as “an absolute honour” the opportunity to work with the current team of committee members.

“They’ve done a brilliant job,” he says. “Our last EB was testament to that. No one would go close to Peter Alexander as president. His political nous and ability to analytically but practically discuss all issues is just incredible.

“He knows when to crunch heads but also knows when to step back and just let things flow. And (Secretary) Andy Dunn’s ability to remember things is amazing. It’s an exciting time and a very good committee.”

Dear Andy

This letter is to formalize the matter of my resignation from the PASA committee of management and the position of deputy president. This resignation will also end my association with the Police Federation of Australia (PFA) as the branch deputy president and delegate to the PFA council. As a consequence of my resignation from PASA, I also resign the position of president of the Police Club Inc.

My resignation from these positions is to coincide with the current PASA election process on March 28, 2005.

I was elected to the committee of PASA on March 30, 1988. Since that time, I have served as treasurer and vice-president and, in 1996, was elected to the position of deputy president.

I was also elected to the committee of the Police Club Inc in 1986, and to the position of president on February 26, 1987.

I have always considered that election to these committees was an honour and a privilege. My personal view is that, as a committee person, I am a gatekeeper for those who follow me in the position.

In 2004, I was awarded life membership of PASA. For this I was both humbled and very grateful. I believe that I have done only what was expected of me.

As the branch deputy president and delegate to the PFA council, I have been party to its development from the old PFANZ into an entity that has a permanent presence in our national capital and a voice for about 47,000 police officers across the country. I compliment all those involved in this ongoing development, in particular our president, Peter Alexander, and CEO, Mark Burgess.

Both PASA and the club have been a big part of my life for the last 17 years. I have been privileged to have worked with and met a very large number of like-minded individuals who only ever wanted to help. Not only to help our members – although that is always our focus – but also other community members who might need it from time to time.

It has been a very rewarding and satisfying experience. To be able to reflect on all the advances that have been achieved leaves me with no regrets. I have been part of major changes in PASA. Our financial position, significant industrial changes, much needed improvements in police salaries and conditions, and the welfare of our members feature prominently.

My reasons for not re-nominating at this coming election are very simple. First, my job within SAPOL has never been busier. On February 13, I completed 38 years of service, and I find that, like everyone else, I have to “put in” more now than at any other time in the past. There are simply not enough sworn members to service community needs.

Second, I do not believe that being a member of committee is a life’s work – opportunity must be given to those other men and women who also have a desire to help.

I suppose my only disappointment has been that of dealing with those within SAPOL who are less passionate than we are about the interests of the members and their welfare. There are too many who only regard it as a job.

For their dedication, professionalism and friendship, I thank all committee and staff – past and present – who I have been fortunate enough to work with over the last 17 years.

The Police Association has never been more relevant than it is today. I leave knowing that our relevance is fully appreciated by the current gatekeepers – and members.

Nick Pippos
Deputy President
(Life Member)