Supported by the latest data released by the Productivity Commission, the ACT Chief Police Officer again has pitched strongly for an increase in extra funding and more police numbers, expressing his concern for how workload demands are resulting in a health impact on his officers.
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The 2020-21 Report on Government Services (ROGS) produced by the commission again revealed the ACT has the lowest number of operational police per 100,000 population than any other jurisdiction and the lowest recurrent expenditure on police per head of population in the country.
Speaking at the federal police headquarters in Barton on Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said his biggest concern was how the pressure of an understrength workforce was causing internal health and welfare stress issues.
"We're seeing health matrices around our workforce deteriorating," he said.
"They [his officers] are not taking as much leave as they should, they are doing more overtime than they should, and there's more unexplained absences so there's more people taking sick leave.
"So for me not only is it an issue of demand and supply, we've also got a workforce that's clearly suffering."
Priority One and Priority Two response targets, which are measures of how quickly police respond to incidents, have not been achieved in the past few years.
ACT Policing is contracted from the Australian Federal Police to provide police services to the territory, which is a line item for the ACT government in its forthcoming budget.
Pressure is building on the ACT government to push more money into the police budget, which currently sits around $204 million a year. Aside from the ROGS data, which shows the ACT well below the national average on policing numbers per head of population, added pressure is likely to come from an independent report on the problem from consultants Price Waterhouse Coopers.
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This report was sought by AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw and is due for release shortly.
"We have a pretty strong business case and the data speaks for itself, in my view," Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said.
"The population of the territory has risen 19 per cent in the past 10 years while police numbers have fallen by 0.7 per cent in raw terms ... so we have actually gone backwards", he said.
"We need to do something; it has become a much more complex [policing] environment, more suicides, more domestic violence, more mental health [issues]."
He said there not just needed to be a conversation about numbers, but also about equipment and resources.
"The City Police Station was built in 1966; we need to ensure we have fit-for-purpose infrastructure and we're having those discussions," he said.
The purchase agreement between the ACT government and the police is a four-year rolling contract.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr disputed the accuracy of the ROGS comparison data in painting a "complete picture".
Nonetheless, he would have a "particular look" in the forthcoming Budget at police resources and "would anticipate a similar package to the 2019 one".
He said that, in 2019, the government delivered a "significant investment package" for the "transformation in the way police deliver their services", with an increase in funding for some 70 police officers.
However, he said the ACT "will always be different to other jurisdictions because we don't have rural and remote components; we have different socio-economic factors and it [the ACT] is a compact city-state".
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