Opinion: No honeymoon period for Qld’s new police commissioner

There will be no honeymoon period for new police commissioner Steve Gollschewski, writes Terry Goldsworthy.

This week saw the appointment of Steve Gollschewski as the Queensland police commissioner. Gollschewski has been a deputy commissioner in the Queensland Police Service for 10 years and has more than 40 years’ experience as a police officer.

There will be no honeymoon period for Gollschewski.

He will be expected to hit the ground running, given he has been part of the executive leadership team of the QPS for a decade.

The new commissioner will face a range of challenges.

In July 2013 the QPS underwent a major restructure process under the tutelage of newly appointed commissioner Ian Stewart.

By 2019 an external review showed that the restructure had failed on almost every performance criterion.

This resulted in the Service Alignment Program, with 22 recommendations from the review to try and fix the ­service.

Fast forward to 2021 and we had the disastrous Service Delivery Redesign Project, meant to introduce a new streamlined system to enhance the way frontline officers serve and protect their communities.

Within months the seemingly flawed rollout was facing threats of legal action by the Queensland Police Union and complaints from officers, and was stopped.

The program was finally put out of its misery by then commissioner Katarina Carroll in 2023 after an external review by Ernst & Young.

Gollschewski will need to convince the rank and file of the QPS that he can bring something new to the table to lift morale and confidence in the senior executive team of the QPS.

In the Working for Queensland survey only 30 per cent of officers surveyed had a positive viewpoint of the senior ­executive.

The same survey showed that 30 per cent of officers surveyed wanted to leave their positions in the next 12 months; another 25 per cent wanted to leave in the next two years.

New Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski with Premier Steven Miles in Townsville on Tuesday. Picture: Evan Morgan

It is little surprise that police are feeling burnt out: Figures obtained in parliament show that in December there were 120 fewer frontline officers than six months earlier.

But it is not just internal issues that will confront Gollschewski.

This week saw the annual Queensland Crime Report for 2022-23 released.

It showed that the crime rate has increased by 11 per cent.

In 2023 Queensland had the highest crime rate for 20 years. This has been brought about by the current Labor government’s soft-on-crime approach that has been years in the making.

As has been the practice of this government, the release of this report was delayed nine months.

On the same day as this report bearing bad news was released, the government released a more recent set of figures claiming crime in Queensland was going down.

You could be excused for being sceptical, given that when the figures are supposedly good the government can release them within weeks.

But there is devil in the detail of the government’s most recent figures.

While there has been a 1 per cent reduction in the overall crime rate, offences against the person have risen by 5 per cent.

More concerningly, the “other offences” category – indicative of police enforcement such as drug and good order arrests – had dropped by 2 per cent, and accounted in the main for the reduction in the overall crime rate.

Figures showing burnt-out police doing less enforcement activity are hardly a shining example of good crime-reduction policy.

The current Queensland government has also gone soft on drugs, last year decriminalising hardcore drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine on the weekend the government quietly announced a permanent pill-testing service in Brisbane, with more services to be opened and others available at festivals.

The latest report on drug consumption released by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission shows that consumption of methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy are increasing in Queensland.

Perhaps Gollschewski could heed the advice of Professor Peter Coaldrake, who said in his review of the Queensland Public Sector: “Restructuring of agencies and changing boundary lines is no substitute for strategy and, in itself, no guarantee for delivering better services.”

Dr Terry Goldsworthy is an associate professor at Bond University