Wednesday, 6 March 2024

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:29): (764) My adjournment is a matter for the Minister for Police. The minister has approved significant cuts to counter hours at many police stations. Despite suburbs in my electorate like Glen Waverley topping the list of areas with the highest rates of aggravated burglary, stations like Forest Hill station have already seen a 33 per cent cut in counter hours. Clearly our communities need more police resources, not less. The Glen Waverley police station, first built in 1984, has not seen a major upgrade since then – 40 years. The crime rate is on the rise, and we must secure a commitment to upgrading this station. Many community members have approached me on this issue concerned there is no one in their area willing to take up the issue and truly fight for the Glen Waverley community. Well, I am willing. Glen Waverley deserves better and in a well-managed state there is just no way anyone would be making cuts to first responders and essential services, so this is clearly a consequence of bad financial management coming home to hurt the community in a real way. We are spending $35 billion on another tunnel; the entire police budget is just $4 billion.

What concerns me more is that the savage cuts to Forest Hill police station were only the first stage of many cuts the minister plans to approve and implement. Other parts of my electorate like Greensborough, Eltham and Boronia have now also seen cuts to counter hours, and this needs to end. The action I seek from the minister is to fund the long overdue upgrade to Glen Waverley police station and more broadly to reverse these savage cuts to frontline services and put the funding where our community needs it most – in essential services, not tunnels.