The $400m budget hole set to spread hiring squeeze to police ranks

Welcome to Brisbane Times’ Queensland public sector column, Public Circus. This week: precarious police finances, a proposed department restructure, “Project Invisibility” and more.

With just two weeks until the state budget is handed down, we’ve added a fifth notch to the tally of departments feeling the heat about hiring staff.

The entrance of the Queensland Police Service is a little different. A crackdown on vacant roles there appears a fate of its own making.

Former public servant Neil Castles, commissioned to dive into the agency’s finances, put it bluntly: an estimated structural deficit by the end of the month of $400 million.

The driving factor, as Castles’ 99-page CBRC-approved report tabled last week lays out, was “poor financial governance” over a number of years.

Interim Commissioner Brett Pointing, who fronted media with Police Minister Dan Purdie to deliver the news, said the department had been “living beyond its means”.

As a result, Pointing has handed the whole thing to the Crime and Corruption Commission, whose chair, Bruce Barbour, was said by Purdie to have OKed its release.

“I think that’s a matter for the CCC to determine,” Pointing said when asked if the issues raised by the report reflected a failure of previous leaders.

These almost 20,000 staff, in an agency with a budget of more than $4 billion, are also likely to see some flow-on effects of Castles’ work, carried out between January and March.

Castles and another figure seconded from Queensland Treasury Corporation were handed the work after a two-week post-MYFER “sprint analysis” of the police books by EY.

Over 21 recommendations, the report calls for development of a model to better forecast staff costs and demand, returning non-operational sworn officers to the frontline, abolish vacant unsworn temporary roles, and freeze hiring for other vacant and new unsworn roles.

The report also calls for $50 million to be trimmed from the supplies and services budget allocation, and a new taskforce to be set up to oversee the reforms. Yikes.

In their media conference, Pointing said he and Purdie were working through the response, but insisted there would not be a blanket freeze on new unsworn roles.

“I’ve considered this, I must admit it, but I can’t do that because policing changes every day and sometimes new priorities will come,” Pointing said.

While redundancies still very much seem taboo for the Crisafulli cabinet, at least among police ranks, attrition appears to be the flavour of the (budget) season.

One thing the agency will apparently have to shell out for is