POLICE BUDGET CUTS UPDATE

The fiasco surrounding the impacts of this government not budgetting for a police wage increase they knew was coming continues to grow. Now the Minister is trying to say the cuts have nothing to do with the pay rise but are a result of the rpevious push to axe 3,500 public sector jobs. someone obviously didn't tell Commissioner Bob Atkinson that.
Make no mistake, this is going to have huge impacts on Cairns and FNQ. Last week we had 165 people arrested on over 800 charges, we had specialist officers sent up to investigate the spate of sexual assaults. Is this really when we want to be cutting operational police budgets?

Where will it end though? Is the govt going to scrap hospital jobs and prison guard jobs if they get their pay rise??

Anyone who doesn't think this is going to impact on service delivery believes in the tooth fairy!
The decision on whether or not a member of the Cairns public gets help from the police should be based on the need, not whether or not overtime will be approved.

Here is the media release I put out-

The Australian Party Candidate for Cairns Darren Hunt has called on the government not to axe police jobs as it will put the lives of Cairns residents in danger.

Mr Hunt said “This is a disgraceful act to try and axe police jobs because this government failed to budget for wage increases for police they knew full well was coming. It is further evidence this government cannot be trusted with the economy.”

“250 police jobs are being axed to cover up this governments incompetence. The government is misleading people saying it won’t impact on police numbers. That is absolute rubbish. Someone is going to have to do the work of those 250 staff. That’s going to mean less police on the streets. Residents of Cairns and the rest of Queensland are going to be placed in danger by these cuts. We are sick to death of the crime rates in our city and to remove even more police from the streets is going to increase those rates.”

“The most disturbing part of this plan is where does it end? We have prison officers currently going through wage negotiations, if they get it will the government axe prison jobs and place staff and the public in danger? What about if health workers get their wage rise, are we going to get jobs axed in hospitals? Once again this government is abusing the commitment our police have to Queensland knowing they cannot go on strike. If any other union was losing jobs of this magnitude because they got a pay rise, there would be hell to pay.”

Darren Hunt

Candidate for Cairns

Here's the Cairns Post Story of impacts on Cairns-
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/10/28/188475_local-news.html