For Immediate Release
10 October 2012

Cutting Staff Doesn’t Make Work Go Away

Cutting another 45 non-constabulary Police jobs will just add to the mounting pressure on the organisation – pressure which ultimately risks driving Police back to the crises of the late 1990s, Police Association President Greg O’Connor said today.

Police National Headquarters yesterday announced 35 to 45 human resources and finance staff were to be cut as a result of restructuring. These cuts follow other non-constabulary job losses needed to meet budget cuts in all Police Districts over the past two years.

“It’s all very well to say ‘these are back room jobs’, but if there’s nobody left in the back room to do them, then that work will inevitably fall on others – including constabulary police officers,” Mr O’Connor said.

“Unfortunately, human resources, finance, and other non-constabulary support staff are frequently the first to be targeted in Police, because they are not the political lightning rod that the sworn constabulary are. But that does not make them any less critical to the effective functioning of Police. These are jobs that have to be done.

“Cutting support staff can only increase the workload and pressure on those left, including sworn constabulary police. High pressure leads to mistakes, and ultimately the public suffers. We have experienced that before, in the late 1990s, where budget cuts led to high profile failures including un-investigated child abuse files, a disastrously slow response to the P epidemic, and the tragic disappearance of Iraena Asher due to underinvestment in the Communications Centres.

“Those failures led to urgent investment in Police, and we are now seeing the benefit in the lowest crime rate in decades. Cuts to the very resources that have made that possible can only mean we start going backwards

“Cutting positions doesn’t make the work go away – it just means someone else has to do it. Every hour a police officer is tied up on administrative work is an hour he or she is not responding to, investigating, solving, and preventing crime,” Mr O’Connor said.

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