Accommodation for police brought in for protests, officers’ meals and overtime blow out expo costs
The bill to Victorian taxpayers for the Melbourne Land Forces weapons conference — overshadowed by violent protests — has blown out to $30m, with more than 12,000 rostered policing shifts.
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The bill to Victorian taxpayers for the Land Forces weapons conference has blown out to $30m after more than 12,000 rostered policing shifts were pulled away from other duties across the state.
The Saturday Herald Sun understands the event cost the state government up to $30m from the public purse — double the initial figure revealed by Treasurer Tim Pallas earlier this week — preparing for and policing the controversial three-day expo that wrapped up on Friday.
The total estimate includes preparation for the event, the response to protests, accommodation for police brought in from regional areas and specialist police from interstate, as well as officers’ meals and overtime.
The state government forked out the huge sum for the biggest police security operation in two decades, during which a crowd of 1500 anarchists stormed the Spencer St bridge on Wednesday.
Victoria Police were forced to strip resources from proactive policing and warrant execution, and needed to scrap traffic policing in some areas to cope with the protests.
It is understood that more than 12,000 individual policing shifts had to be filled throughout the event.
Police sources told the Saturday Herald Sun that road patrols in Geelong, Shepparton, Mildura and Portland were worst hit by the intense security effort.
Officers stationed in Warrnambool were forced to volunteer their free time to patrol community events at the weekend as members were diverted to the city for the demonstrations.
Horsham was left without enough officers to cover night patrols – down from three vans to at times an average of less than one.
Officers required to complete regular night patrols in the CBD said they were so thinly stretched that they could not attend some reported incidents for several hours, and were reduced to just one patrol van.
Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said the large-scale policing effort had only worsened Victoria’s severe shortage of officers.
“It draws them out of those local communities and drags them into the CBD,” he said.
“Before Land Forces, we were struggling to keep police stations open, and executive command have been closing police stations for many months now, and that’s something we’ve rallied strongly against.
“We have people waiting excessive periods of time for police responses because of our short, reduced police resources in regions.”
Despite the hefty price tag and the violent protests, Treasurer Tim Pallas signalled that Victoria was likely to bid to hold the biannual event again.
“This is the biggest Land Forces exhibit that’s ever happened in this country by quite a considerable margin,” he said.
“Some $70m worth of economic investment, we think, is flowing directly from it.
“I anticipate that we would be looking to see what we can do in terms of securing what I think has been a very substantial project.”
He said the protests were the cost of living in a democratic country.
“Democracy comes at a cost,” he said.
“While it is irritating to a treasurer because it’s money that would otherwise not have to be spent, it’s money that I will never argue against deploying in order to preserve our rights as a community to be able to protest.”
Mr Pallas said the government might look to change the venue in the future, and would need to determine whether the organisers had a “continuing appetite to conduct the event in that location, in this state”.
“That will be the subject of continuing discussion,” he said.
The anti-war activists said they would “100 per cent” return to the streets if the city held the conference again.
Protesters said it would be “a bit of a joke” if the state again poured millions of taxpayer dollars into hosting and policing the event.
“I think it’s hypocritical that they want to put another conference on,” organiser Eddie Papp said.
“It’s misinformed and the public don’t want it.”
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