First published by The Weekly Times, 23 August 2023

Peter Hunt

Police officers from 98 one-person stations in small towns will be forced from their posts and rostered out to larger regional centres and cities, in plans they fear will undermine the security of rural communities.

Victoria Police is forging ahead with the proposed move as it struggles to deal with an exodus of officers, with 800 unfilled vacancies leading to rostering shortages in large 24-hour stations.

Small-town officers told The Weekly Times that police command had demanded a radical rewrite of the enterprise agreement with the union, the Police Association of Victoria, to allow rostering out to larger stations.

Clause 184.8 of the enterprise agreement currently states one-person station officers can “only be rostered away from their response zone in emergencies or critical situations”, and then only if “the employee’s area does not suffer in terms of provision of service to his or her local community”.

But Police command has lodged a log of claims with the union that would amend clause 184, allowing it to “increase the mobility for the deployment and rostering of one-member station employees”.

Opposition police spokesman Brad Battin said there were hundreds of police off on long-term sick leave, with the only plan in place being to “steal staff from smaller regional stations” to keep 24-hour stations open.

“This is making many communities more unsafe with wait times often hours foran emergency response in remote parts of Victoria,” Mr Battin said.

Small town police officers warn the clause 184 amendment would allow Police command to regularly roster them out of their communities to fill the growing number of vacancies in large urban stations, undermining the security of the rural towns in which they live.

“There’s always some day-to-day flexibility,” one officer said. “But amending (clause) 184 means they will tell us – ‘in two weeks we will take you away for two days at Bendigo’.”

Another officer said he was always willing to show “a little bit of leeway” in helping out, but police command had to realise “there are about 100 of us covering about a third of the response zones (in Victoria), while 15,000 covered two-thirds”.

One northern Victorian officer said police command often had no idea of just how embedded and important one-person stations were to rural communities, given “you can’t quantify interaction”.

Police Minister Anthony Carbine’s office said decisions around the allocation and deployment of police officers was a matter for the chief commissioner of police.

When Victoria Police command was asked why it was pursuing amendments to the 184 one-person clause, VicPol’s spokesman said: “We will not provide a running commentary on specific matters which may be the subject of negotiation”.

The spokesman did acknowledge that “Victoria Police currently has about 800 police vacancies due to attrition, however there are currently hundreds of recruits progressing through the Police Academy”.

But on-the-ground officers and the union say the Andrews Government’s 2022 pre-election budget commitment to recruit 502 police was not covering losses.

“I’ve never seen it so bad – (with) people wanting to get out of the job, those that are sick of it,” one officer said.

He said a quick glance of the Victoria Police gazette showed there was no way recruitment could keep pace with the loss of officers.

“On Monday in the gazette there were about 40 retirees over 10 days,” the regional Victorian officer, who did not want to be named, said. “They can’t keep up with the retirements and the blokes resigning.”

Police union secretary Wayne Gatt said: “The Victorian Government has lost hundreds of police over the past two years

We have about 800 vacancies, so any suggestion that the force has grown by additional police this year would be a fallacy.”

As for amending the one-person station clause 184, Mr Gatt said: “We will engage with Victoria Police in good faith in an attempt to understand what it is seeking through changes to the way single-officer stations are resourced.

“We would not support changes that in our view would diminish a policing service to our regional communities.”

But the impacts of 800 unfilled vacancies are already been felt, with officers saying they are being pulled out of 16-hour stations to meet Commissioner Shane Patton’s mandate that every shift at nearby 24-hour stations must be filled.

Gippsland East MP Tim Bull said he was seeing the impacts in his electorate, with officers pulled out of Lakes Entrance to fill positions at the 24-hr station in Bairnsdale.

Northern Victoria upper house Nationals MP Gaelle Broad said officers at one-person stations “provided an important connection with their local community – people feel safe”.

Bethanga farmer Peter Star said it “instils a level of confidence that we have a police presence in the community”.

Mr Gatt said the number of vacant positions was matched by about the same number of police on long-term mental health injuries sustained at work.

“Make no mistake, the more people we have away from work and the longer it takes to respond to this numbers crisis, the more members will leave work injured,” he said.