Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, I will also make my substantial contribution to the motion in order to save time, because I know Mr Jenner would like to address this.
Thank you very much for bringing this on today and for sharing your stories. This is incredibly important. The Greens will support the original motion from Mr Jenner. I will get to the amendment in just a moment, but we want to begin by thanking all of our incredible police force and emergency services workers in Tasmania, many of whom are out today dealing with a lot of issues that have come from the storm. We thank you for what you are doing.
The work the police and all emergency services do is challenging and complex. By its very nature, it requires them to put their life on the line for others and to be there in the direst circumstances. I, the Greens and the Tasmanian community are very grateful for the work they do. I emphasise that this sentiment is shared across all emergency services. The trauma, stresses and injury experienced by police, put forward in this motion by Mr Jenner, is shared across all of those departments and services. A study conducted by the Black Dog Institute in 2023‑24 estimated that at least one in 10 emergency services workers in Australia would develop PTSD and that emergency service workers are twice as likely to experience a mental health condition than the general population. That is purely because of the trauma they experience while they are at work, let alone when they retire.
I am going to skip to the amendment to make sure Mr Jenner has time.
The SPEAKER – The vote is due at 6.37 p.m.
Ms BADGER – Great. We will not be supporting the amendment. It does not even give a timeframe for that collaboration with the Police Association. It is a lazy amendment to put forward. It is insulting. The government should already be collaborating with the Retired Police Association of Tasmania to develop these options. This is not a new proposal. This is something they have been speaking about to many members across the Chamber for quite some time. The question really is: why wasn’t the government listening before?
If it comes down to the cost, it can be planned for with good budget management. However, it is not just about the cost. Yesterday, we had the supplementary appropriation bill come forward with that amount. It is known and we have the statistics here in front of us. In 2021, Tasmania Police had 112 active workers compensation claims, with 49 of those claims related to psychological injury and 37 were fully incapacitated. Last year, 2024, there were 201 open claims, 142 of which related to psychological injury, and 108 staff, or 7 per cent of the total workforce, were fully incapacitated. That is just police still in the workforce, let alone those who are retired. We have a duty of care and moral obligation to ensure that our police and all emergency services personnel are looked after when they have finished serving the community.
We are also neglecting the very basics, their costs and causes. Obviously, in emergency services there are causes that organically come with that job. They are dealing with death, family and sexual violence. Incredibly high emotions go with a lot of the situations they are responding to, and that is all part of their job.
However, there are some other basic things. For example, it needs to be recognised that understaffing has a significant impact on psychological injury in the workplace. We have seen the lack of investment in critical service areas and we are soon going to be facing more within the State Service. We have to be looking after the basics as well.
We do have a civic duty to fund this and we have to ensure that we do so, so that we have a healed, caring and safe Tasmanian community moving forward.
