Victoria Police has been funding its crime-fighting operations with a series of emergency government bailouts amid warnings the force may no longer be financially sustainable.
The repeated budget blowouts have forced Victoria Police to launch a cost-cutting program after the Andrews government baulked at providing annual budget top-ups and rescue packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Police confront anti vaccination and anti lockdown protestors during a protest in September.Credit:Jason South
As The Age revealed on Saturday, Victoria Police has grown through the last decade into the largest law enforcement agency in the country after adding a record 3100 new police officers as part of the Andrews government’s sweeping law and order agenda.
The state’s war on crime has seen spending on police, courts and prisons grow at double or triple the rate of other states and territories over the last decade with Victoria now arresting and jailing people at levels not seen since the 19th century.
There has been a large spend on new police stations and high-tech gear, including military-style assault rifles, anti-riot equipment, armoured personnel carriers, and a new fleet of aircraft. Police are also being called on to perform an ever-widening raft of roles, including running specialist domestic violence programs and responding to disasters such as the bushfires and COVID-19 pandemic.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said frontline operations would not be affected by cost-cutting.
“We believe these are prudent, necessary steps that will allow Victoria Police to prioritise spending on policing services that keep people safe while also contributing towards the economic recovery of our state following last year’s bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic response,” she said.
The government is coming under pressure to rein in spiralling law and order spending which diverts funds from other services which can help reduce offending and reoffending.
“We need an effective police force, but successive governments have prioritised police and prison spending over spending on the things that work to address the root causes of crime, like education, housing, mental health and disability support, drug and alcohol services,” said the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Hugh de Kretser.
Victoria Police has required emergency funding top-ups worth hundreds of millions of dollars since 2017 despite also receiving annual budget increases through that period of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2021, Victoria Police needed a rescue package of $175 million to fund its operations. This was separate from the $111 million the government provided for the force’s COVID-19 response.
The major problem is a spiralling wages bill from a record recruitment drive and a series of expensive enterprise bargaining agreements with the Police Association of Victoria.
The force has also been swamped by legal bills following a series of misconduct scandals relating to use of force, alleged corruption and sexual abuse. Victoria Police spent more than $100 million on legal fees in the past two years and is facing about $58 million more in civil lawsuits.
It is also anticipating a slew of potential claims relating to its involvement with barrister-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo in the wake of the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.
There is also a special fund underwritten by the government to pay out up to $42 million to police personnel who have been the victims of sexual harassment and abuse at work.
The force’s financial problems have become so acute that they have drawn the attention of the Victorian Auditor-General, who wrote in a recent report that the Department of Treasury and Finance was having “ongoing discussions with Victoria Police on its financial sustainability”.
In the 2022 budget, the Andrews government offered police only a $35 million funding increase instead of rises of about $250 million per year it had been handing out since 2017. A treasury spokesman said there had been no cuts to Victoria Police’s budget.
“We continue to work closely with Victoria Police to ensure it is appropriately funded and its budget is efficiently and effectively managed, while continuing to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of the community and the organisation’s operational requirements are met.”
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said it was “committed to achieving financial sustainability”.
“We understand our organisation is funded by taxpayers to keep the community safe and we take this responsibility very seriously.”
The force has been implementing a series of cost-cutting initiatives, including a temporary freeze on the recruitment of civilian staff and slashing spending on items “not directly related to frontline policing”.
But it remains unclear how Victoria Police can achieve big savings given employee expenses account for nearly three-quarters of spending and frontline “sworn” uniformed officers and detectives are exempt from the budget cuts.
Former chief commissioner Christine Nixon, who faced a similar budget crisis over wage expenses in 2004, said outsiders do not understand there is “not a lot of fat in the system,” and responding to demand cannot be met if police don’t have the necessary staff resources.
“The government is not going to let one of its institutions, in a sense, go broke. But you don’t just go up and ask for more. It has to be justified and choices have to be laid out to government: what do you want us to stop doing?”
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