Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023‒24 Financial and Performance Outcomes

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (10:22): I rise to make some comments on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee 2023–24 financial and performance outcomes. There are a number of parts of information in this report that look at better financial outputs and performance right across the sector, and in the lead-up to the budget it is really important that these things are taken into consideration and that we ensure that in every single portfolio there is the funding available to ensure that all the services are delivered properly and effectively for the community.

In my portfolio of police there are some specifics within this particular report that deal with the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. This is a key issue. Particularly since the lockdowns of COVID in 2020 we have seen so many Victorians that have suffered – particularly so many children. There is not a day that goes by when I am not talking to one of my constituents or friends who has a family member that has suffered as a result of that time. There is a lot of work to be done, and I think we need to acknowledge it, we need to support it and we need to ensure that particularly our younger generations have the means and that kind of support to ensure that they can progress forward.

One of the groups that really suffered during that time, particularly with the escalation of mental health issues, is Victoria Police. This report talks of the amount of incidents that Victoria Police have had to deal with. The royal commission found that the mental health system in Victoria was not equipped to handle mental health emergencies, with police often responding first, leading to increased trauma and stigma for people in crisis. From 2014 to 2018 there was a 10.9 per cent average and then that went up to 13 per cent, an increase to a number of some 43,000 events relating to a mental health crisis – equal to a police response every 12 minutes on average.

By 2023–24 this increased to approximately 54,000 call-outs, or one every 10 minutes. If you think about that, every 10 minutes – following COVID it went from every 12 minutes to every 10 minutes, and it has probably just continued on –a police officer is called out to deal with a mental health crisis, a situation or a complex case. Many of those police are not trained to do that. I know one thing that we spoke of even during our time in government back in 2010 to 2014 was the police, ambulance and clinical early response (PACER) vehicles, which put health and police together. I think all of that stuff is really important.

In my concluding time I want to particularly talk about the support not just for many of those experiencing mental health issues but for police as one of the groups that is experiencing complex mental health issues – and it talks about this in the recommendations in this report, how we can support Victoria Police members better. The Police Association Victoria talked to me a lot about this. There are escalations in police leaving the force or on lots of stress leave as a result of the job. The job is becoming more complex. The job is becoming tougher for Victorian police, even in the period, as many people will know from my advocacy, around the events since 7 October. To have 18,000 police shifts babysitting protests in the streets in the city – they are additional shifts on top of other work that police have to do. They have been traumatised, they have been understaffed and they have been underpaid for a long time.

I think one of the things that we would be looking for in this budget is what it is going to do to ensure Victoria Police are better supported, have the mechanisms available to do their jobs better – even basic things; we are told sometimes they have to use their own mobile phones because they are not properly equipped. They have got to be equipped, they have got to be supported and they have got to be funded, and we have to acknowledge the hard work that the men and women of Victoria Police do each and every day to keep us safe, particularly in a crime crisis. They are really overstretched, and I would be hoping in this budget we see the support needed for Victoria Police to ensure we bring down the escalation of the crime rates that we are seeing, to provide the community safety that people expect and ultimately to recognise that working in Victoria Police is a tough job. We thank them each and every day for their service.