AFP officers in 20 per cent pay push

Australian Federal Police officers are seeking major wage rises, warning dozens of officers are quitting every month due to poor pay.

Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana.

Australian Federal Police officers are seeking significant wage rises of up to 20 per cent over the next three years, warning dozens of officers are quitting every month due to poor pay.

Ahead of negotiations kicking off on Tuesday, Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana said AFP members had gone from the nation’s highest-paid police force to the lowest-paid over the past decade.

Federal public sector workers have been offered a 11.2 per cent over three years but the AFP has yet to put a formal pay offer to the AFPA.

Along with the Community and Public Sector Union, the AFPA is pressing for a 20 per cent increase over three years.

Mr Caruana said the AFPA would prefer a stand-alone agreement for AFP officers that delivered pay rises beyond the 11.2 per cent proposed by the government, as well as increases in attraction or retention allowances, as done by some state police forces.

“When it comes to the current cost of living as a starting point, AFP members haven’t had a decent pay rise for the last 16 years and we’ve gone from being the highest-paid police force down to literally the lowest – paid police force,” he told The Australian.

“My pitch to the government is if you want to have a federal police force that is able to stop things like national crime, drugs, people-smuggling, sexual slavery, child pornography, cyber crime, we need to attract the best people to do that job and you’re not going to do that at the moment when we’re paying such a low figure.”

He said a starting AFP graduate earned about $75,000 a year before allowances, $25,000 less than a Queensland police graduate, while AFP surveillance officers were earning $30,000 less than Australian Border Force surveillance officers.

“We’re losing dozens of police officers every month, taking up other job opportunities in other areas of the commonwealth or state policing,” he said

“If you’re a young person and you’re thinking about being a police officer, and pay is a motivator, the AFP would obviously be your last choice in terms of pay.

“So in order to attract and retain the best, we need to up our pay. We’re not asking to be paid the most but what we’re asking for is to be paid somewhere in the top 25 per cent of police officers in Australia. If there isn’t the budget, they need to make the budget because how can we keep Australians safe, how can the government continue to make promises to our international partners in the Pacific that we are going to have a presence over there to help them?

“How can we continue to make promises to our international partners through NATO and the UN that we are going to help out in some of (that) transnational organised crime policing that we do?”

Mr Caruana said AFP officers were very limited in the industrial action they could take legally, which was another reason they should not be treated industrially like public servants who could take action more easily.

“The only industrial action that we’ve been approved in the past was not giving out parking and speeding tickets in the ACT but that doesn’t affect the federal government in any way, shape or form,” he said

An AFP spokeswoman said the AFP’s bargaining position had been shaped by employees’ feedback after they were asked “what matters most to them in the new enterprise agreement”.

“AFP employees identified personal flexibility and cost of living as important issues for them. Organisationally, the AFP is seeing an increasingly complex criminal environment creating a growing demand for different technical skill sets,” the spokeswoman said

“The AFP believes it can address these needs by putting in place an agreement that is streamlined, agile, flexible and innovative, competitive and sustainable”.