Queensland Police has become a comedy club, bereft of leaders
Queensland has become a laughing state where police officers are too frightened to go to work amid an absence of leaders who will deliver tough measures, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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What an embarrassment our society has become – and Queensland a laughing stock – when police officers are too frightened to go to work.
Those charged with enforcing the law are at the mercy of those who flout it. A more skewed scenario is hard to imagine.
However, it’s been in the making for the best part of a decade so no-one – including the Labor government or similarly soft judicial system should be surprised.
As youth crime spirals even further out of control, frontline officers are calling in sick, refusing to travel in marked police cars for fear of being rammed, and don’t want to walk the streets at night in case they are set upon by gangs.
The Courier-Mail also revealed this week that police are fed up with the revolving door that is the Children’s Court and, significantly, many have lost confidence in their boss, Commissioner Katarina Carroll, to literally have their back.
Community calls to change the name of the Queensland Police Service back to the Queensland Police Force are ringing loudly as fed-up taxpayers want more from an increasingly thinner blue line.
The force name was axed in 1990 as the first Labor premier in 32 years, Wayne Goss, rightly began implementing the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
A new badge was designed and the motto, With Honour We Serve, adopted. Stamping out police corruption and standover tactics that had become routine under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was necessary.
But fast forward to where we are today, and the police “service” has been watered down to such an extent that juvenile offenders think it’s as much of a joke as the judicial system they manipulate.
Queensland under Sir Joh is remembered differently by people who lived through those years but one thing the National Party stalwart was not was soft.
He refused to bow to union demands, famously or infamously (depending on your point of view) quashing a 1985 SEQEB strike and restoring power to Queensland homes – in the height of summer.
Campbell Newman, another polarising premier, went hard on bikies with laws subsequently repealed by accidental premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Over the eight and a half years of her time in office, Ms Palaszczuk’s government did nothing to curb youth crime.
She and Police Minister Mark Ryan excelled only at waffle.
As late as this time last year – when she still expected to beat Peter Beattie’s tenure and crack nine years – Ms Palaszczuk said: “We will use the full force of the law to target the small cohort of serious repeat offenders that currently pose a threat to community safety.
“When these kids reoffend time and again, we need the police to catch them. And we need the courts to do their job.”
A few months prior, in December 2022, she said: “My government is listening and we are acting.”
Surely, “acting” in the theatrical sense of the word.
Here’s one example of a token move: increasing the maximum penalty for violent juvenile car thieves to 14 years’ jail – when the Magistrates Court fails to hand down the shorter maximum time behind bars and release kids back on to the streets.
The much-touted use of ankle bracelets was also a fizzer, with only eight kids ordered to wear them in the original 16-month trial from 2021.
Ms Carroll last week called on the Miles Government to revisit the trial for teens on bail, with only five of the GPS devices currently in use.
But the embattled commissioner has bigger problems to deal with yet seemingly no answers for them.
She has said she will “always provide frank and fearless advice to government” but advice means diddly-squat unless the right people are listening.
Mr Ryan appears to be tone deaf when it comes to youth crime, nodding at whatever the previous or current premier (same but different) says in the hope of placating a furious public.
Except we won’t be patronised or treated like fools. Neither should our police officers.
With the October election looming, whether or not Ms Carroll keeps her job remains to be seen, but the problem is greater than the performance of any commissioner.
Queensland deserves leaders who will deliver tough measures – even at the risk of votes – not people who’d do a better job at the local comedy club.
Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
kylie.lang@news.com.au
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