Thanks so much, Pat, for that generous introduction.
Firstly, can I acknowledge retired members of the Police Association, Minister Catley, Leader of the Opposition, Kellie Sloane, Anthony, as well as Kevin Morton, Pat, and of course the New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, and the senior leadership who’s here with us today.
And can I start by thanking Kevin Morton for being so frank and honest in that speech to open this conference.
Kevin undeniably puts the interests of the Police Association and its members first and never holds back in advocating for them whether it’s in open forums like this one or in meetings we have with the Police Association.
I know members can be confident that you’ve got a passionate, experienced advocate fighting on behalf of New South Wales Police, and our Government respects that, and wherever and whenever we can, we listen and we act to help the men and women of the New South Wales Police Force.
So I want you to know that I take on board everything Kevin said, particularly about the exhaustion that comes from modern policing, and I have to say it’s a fair point.
We need more police officers in New South Wales.
That means more recruits coming through the academy; more experienced officers joining up perhaps from other jurisdictions; and fewer experienced officers burning out and leaving the force because it’s exhausting and it’s a difficult job.
Now that idea shouldn’t be controversial – that we need more frontline workers, particularly police officers, protecting our community.
But the truth is, in the last five or so years, we have heard certain people attack that simple and obvious proposition.
I’m talking about whacky and frankly dangerous ideas, sometimes voiced by Greens MPs, saying we should cut funding to law enforcement, or, it even comes in a hashtag, defund the police.
Now that’s easy to say from the safety of a Twitter page, or behind the walls of parliamentary privilege.
But as we saw on December 14 last year, in the worst terrorist attack in the history of our state, when people hear gunfire, when lives are on the line and the community is justifiably terrified – do we hear anyone calling to defund the police?
In those life and death moments, we turn to incredibly brave NSW police officers. People like Constable Scott Dyson and Probationary Constable Jack Hibbert – who took the call, who ran towards the gunfire, and were severely injured defending their community.
Jack Hibbert was twenty two.
Before Bondi, he had spent four months in the field as a NSW Police Officer.
Last time I was at a Goulburn attestation with the Commissioner, Kevin and Yas, half the parade ground was under the age of twenty one.
Watching them march out, it occurred to me that we ask our officers, many of whom might be in their first full time job, to walk into terrible situations as an ordinary part of their working day.
And if there was an emergency tomorrow, we’d ask them to do it all over again, because the truth is we don’t have a choice – we need them.
And if we’re going to send people like you into danger, we need to give you reinforcements, we need to pay you properly, and when it comes down to it, we need to have your back both in word and in deeds.
Earlier this year, we had significant protests on the streets of Sydney, and the police were asked to keep mourners and protesters apart, to avoid some incredibly ugly, potentially violent scenes, just a month after the worst terrorism event in the State’s history.
In the aftermath of that night, I made the point that, if you are going to scrutinise the actions of NSW Police, you can’t just look at one snapshot – you need the full context.
And you can’t judge the actions of a police officer on the back of a social media micro clip – usually posted without context.
It’s not fair – and we as citizens must understand that these high pressure situations involve millisecond judgements made under enormous pressure.
It is always possible to sit and scrutinise a confrontation – in the comfort of a study in slow motion – and maybe wag our finger and condemn a police officer in a Twitter post.
But the real world doesn’t work like that and any examination must be judged in the tumult in which it occurred.
Life doesn’t happen in single frames; it doesn’t happen in replays.
For police officers it happens every shift, every night without warning, and while no one can get it right all the time, our police, NSW police, the vast, vast majority of the time, approach terrible situations with honour and courage.
I need to report to you that there has been a problem with police numbers in this state.
When we came to Government, we had more people leaving the police than joining up, which means the police are feeling stretched and overworked, watching more and more colleagues leave the job, without new recruits coming in to fill their positions.
There’s no point in sugarcoating it. It’s an urgent need to change.
We think that the wages cap that was in place during the last 12 years before the change in Government in 2023, didn’t help New South Wales police, and the Police Association demanded that it be changed.
We were asking people to put their lives on the line, to sacrifice for their community, while their real pay was going backwards.
And the statistics show that if you look at the pay and conditions for New South Wales police, and you add in inflation, there was a cut to real wages for New South Wales police over that decade.
In our estimation, that policy was a burden on working families in New South Wales, and it was absolutely contributing to the loss of staff in the State.
So we got rid of the wages cap.
Which meant we were able to sign an historic agreement with Kevin, Pat and Beary of the Police Association – giving police officers in NSW the biggest pay rise in decades.
We did that, one: because it was the right thing to do, to reward hardworking police after a twelve year absence of genuine wage increases.
And two: because we need to attract and retain more people to this critical profession.
If we want essential workers to sign up, we’ve got to pay them.
And that is what we decided to do at Goulburn – after hearing the demands of the Police Association, I think at one of my first one of these conferences.
Over the last few years, new recruits are being paid nearly $30,000 for their four months of training at the Goulburn Academy.
We knew that there were people out there who wanted to retrain their profession and come into the police force, but they had families, they had had existing work obligations, and they couldn’t spare the time.
They were keen, and they were able, but they couldn’t afford the time off to retrain as a police officer in this state and as the Police Association pointed out, in other jurisdictions those states did pay police officers to learn to become police officers.
I’m pleased to report that since that change, graduating classes have risen year on year, applications have grown an amazing seventy percent, seven, zero percent, and the last class to march out of the academy was the biggest class in 13 years.
As the PA predicted – it’s working.
I can announce this morning, as of December, we’ll be putting on a fourth class at Goulburn, increasing the annual graduations by up to thirty percent.
And we’ll back this by launching a new advertising campaign, calling on members of the community to sign up to the best police force in the world and have pride in this essential service.
We’ve seen this work before in NSW, with a hard-hitting advertising campaign to drive recruitment and we think it will make a difference this time as well.
We’ve still got a long way to go, and I’m not here to do a victory lap, or declare that it’s mission accomplished. But we do believe that it’s progress.
More people are signing up, we think the incentives are beginning to work.
Since the payment was introduced, we’ve had 6,700 applications – a seventy percent increase.
And not just the payments – but our campaign to poach officers from other states; and our new pathway to help new recruits work in their hometown is making a difference too.
They are about building the kind of force that embraces officers and keeps them on board for the long run.
For someone, that might mean a pay rise, understandably, with the cost of living and the pressure on household budgets going through the roof.
For someone else, it might mean staying in their hometown, to be a police officer in their community, so they can do their dream job while keeping their mates and their family around.
And for someone else, they might be going through a tough patch, they might be struggling physically or mentally, and they need a bit of help at work.
As Kevin said, no officer should feel as if they’re standing by themselves in this job.
And that was the reasoning behind the new Health, Safety and Wellbeing Command – which is embedding mental health clinicians across PACs, PDs and specialist commands.
In many professions, the world is much safer than it used to be.
Workplace health and safety is a different beast to twenty or thirty years ago, and that’s a good thing.
But the reality is, for all our efforts, there are some professions we can’t make fully safe, that by nature are dangerous.
Policing is one of those professions.
All we can do is ask brave men and women to sign up, and when they do sign up, we can support them with the best available physical and mental care.
That’s the right thing to do.
But it’s also absolutely necessary if we want to retain professionals in this uniquely intense job.
We’ve seen some positive signs here too – with 50 percent fall in psych injuries since the creation of that command; and a 25 percent drop in resignations.
I’m conscious of the challenges you are facing every day, with a broad mission, with more responsibilities, with a desperate need for more officers in the field.
We’re hearing that loud and clear, and we’ll have more to say about prisoner transports and mental health callouts.
But I do want you to remember, for all the challenges, for all the occasional noise and unfair criticisms, for all the negativity, we are incredibly proud of the work you do – keeping the people of New South Wales safe.
And what’s more, I know the vast, vast majority of our people are proud of you too.
So thank you to the Police Association for having me today.
Thank you to the police officers of this great state.
You do the uniform proud. You do this state proud.
And it’s an honour to work with you as the Premier of NSW.
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