Ms BADGER – Minister, a couple of questions about police services and equipment. The multipurpose protection vests that are currently being worn by operational police are expiring and will need to be replaced at a cost of around $4.8 million over the next four years. How are you expecting Tasmania Police to fund the replacement of the vests while they’re also dealing with the significant efficiencies placed on them over that same four‑year period?
Mr ELLIS – I think we’ve outlined, Ms Badger, what some of those efficiencies will be. None of those have anything to do with personal protective equipment. So, if that’s potentially helpful in terms of your thinking, we’ve clearly identified that there are opportunities to make savings that have nothing to do with frontline services. That’s what our commitment to the Tasmanian people is and what we’re looking to deliver.
In terms of equipment, our government has always had a strong focus in investing for safety equipment. We were the government that brought in body-worn cameras for police officers and we’ve made significant investments as part of the Budget to continue to increase those opportunities for rolling out.
In terms of our police protective vests, obviously we have a range of different investments there and we have some opportunities to continue to work with the department around renewing and refreshing the fleet of vests. I’ll pass over to the commissioner to add further.
Ms ADAMS – Through you, minister, the actual MIPV program of the vests is a rolling program, so the vests don’t all expire at the same time. They’ve been brought on in different allocations over a number of years. The first cohort of vests to expire will be at the end of next year and we have a number of opportunities as to how we manage the replacement of the vests. We can get them recertified, which will then provide a number of other years where they can continue to be operational and used by our members or we can replace those vests with new vests.
We’re currently trialling a number of vests across the organisation at the moment because technology changes and we want to make sure that we make a decision to get the right vest when we move forward. It’s a program of work that we’ve been managing and, as I said, we have options. At no stage will we be leaving officers in a situation where their safety is compromised. That is absolutely our number one priority, to make sure that we’ve got safety equipment that’s fit for purpose and that’s hence why we’ve got the trial.
Ms BADGER – Following on from that, further on the equipment, and as the minister mentioned, the body-worn cameras, there are we understand some detectives across the state who deal with some of the most vulnerable people in Tasmania – children – and they don’t have access to the technology of the body-worn cameras at this point. How does the government justify not having the funding for the full roll-out of the body-worn cameras to all operational arms of Tasmania Police?
Mr ELLIS – I’m glad to hear that the Greens are supportive of the body-worn cameras because I don’t think that was necessarily always the case. We’ve brought body‑worn camera funding from zero to where it is now, which is rolled-out right across our frontline for our police officers. It’s an important investment because, particularly for those frontline officers in uniform in our busy 24/7 stations, for example, that’s important in terms of evidence-gathering and also as a deterrent in terms of assaults on police. We’re always looking to review the way that we continue to provide those and make them available. Perhaps the commissioner might want to speak to the kind of risk assessments that we do around which particular staff might have access to it.
Ms BADGER – Yes, and noting that the question was very specifically just about the detectives.
Mr ELLIS – I understand.
Ms ADAMS – Through you, minister, this funding will continue to support our newly‑graduated recruits. Obviously, as we have an uplift and a growth of police numbers, it’s important to ensure that our frontline numbers have access to body-worn cameras. The program has been a rolling program over a number of years. Every time we’ve been supported with funding, we’ve undertaken risk assessments to determine which specialist areas should next have the body-worn camera. An example of that risk assessment is our special operations group now has body-worn cameras. As part of this particular funding, that’s what we’ll do, we’ll conduct a risk assessment to determine which areas should next have the expanded opportunity for body-worn cameras.
