September 1999 Volume 80 Number 9 "serving the protectors"
Labor Pledge to Boost Police Numbers
By John Ballantyne

SAPOL’s low staffing levels have created a dangerous situation which will end in tragedy, according to Opposition police spokesman, Patrick Conlon.

As guest speaker at the July Police Club luncheon, Conlon pledged that a future Labor government would increase police numbers by 200 in real terms (that is, in addition to replacing police numbers lost through attrition).

Moreover, Conlon said that he would regard anything short of success in meeting this target as failure on his part.

Conlon said that it has long been his ambition to be Police Minister, and that he has always had a particularly high regard for the police. He said that, through his past work for the United Firefighters’ Union and for Bill ‘WAGs’ Morris (member of the PASA Solicitors’ Panel), he has learnt something about the culture of emergency services workers.

He expressed his admiration for how police are prepared day after day to do jobs no-else will do; and his regret that their efforts are rarely reported in the media unless something goes wrong.

He deplored the working conditions which many police are forced to endure. He was dismayed, during a recent tour of country areas with fellow Labor MP, Tom Koutsantonis, to witness at first-hand the amount of late-night driving undertaken by country police, and how, because of under-staffing, overworked police are often expected to cover for absent colleagues.

Conlon also attacked the Olsen government’s Police Bill, then before parliament, which he claimed would increase the risk of police being sacked unjustly and altogether make their careers more precarious.

There was an urgent need, Conlon said, to restore faith in the nation’s basic institutions. There was a striking contrast, he observed, between the unprecedentedly low regard in which governing institutions, such as politicians and the courts, are held, and the consistently high level of public respect enjoyed by the police.

The police, suggested Conlon, are such an important institution in society that their relationship with the executive government deserves far greater attention.

He discussed the importance in civil society of constitutional checks and balances, and particularly the “separation of powers” of the judiciary, legislature and executive government, in order to protect the citizenry from tyranny.

But because, in constitutional terms, police are a relatively recent nineteenth-century development, little thought has been given to where they fit in.

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