Thursday, 17 October 2024

Victoria Police

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:03): (1201) My adjournment matter tonight is to the Minister for Police, and the action I seek is that he undertakes a systematic review of police uniforms to ensure the removal of any thin blue line badges. Police in Victoria should not be wearing thin blue line badges full stop. They are associated with violent white supremacy, particularly in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, and are another example of Australian far-right groups co-opting American symbols. The American version of this symbol was flown alongside the Confederate flag at the deadly white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

Back in 2020 then Assistant Commissioner Tess Walsh warned Victoria Police members against displaying this badge, claiming:

The badge is counter to our … organisational values.

And yet I have seen multiple reports of police continuing to wear this symbol even just this year. I have heard that it was seen in early May at a rally outside the company AW Bell, in mid-June outside a Menzies for Palestine rally outside Keith Wolahan’s office – and this officer was again reported to still be wearing the symbol at Templestowe College later in June – and then just this week we have seen a report of a police officer allegedly performing Nazi salutes at the police training academy. These are starting to feel more like an ingrained cultural issue than separate incidents.

It is crucial that white supremacy and far-right ideologies are not allowed to take hold in our communities and certainly not in Victoria Police. The threat these dangerous ideologies bring to our community is real and impacts our multicultural communities often first and worst. Minister, it is time to clear out the ranks and ensure that no-one in Victoria Police is able to continue to wear this dog whistle of a symbol.