President's Column - Austerity looms over hard-won gains
"In an ironic piece of retro it could be John Banks again!"
The election is done and dusted, National has a majority with Act NZ and Peter Dunne, and by the time you read this, we may have a new minister. In an ironic piece of retro, it could be John Banks again!
Whoever it is, we got a hint of what might be ahead in the week before the election when news sneaked out early that the January and February wings had been deferred.
The week before that, we had been beaten up about not dealing with a supposed $80K fraud that had been pushed down the priority list by a homicide.
We’ve made some serious advances in Police over the past 10 years.
Better cars, better stations and better strategies; run-down drug squads, Comms centres and CAT teams finally resourced properly. It took a lot of pain and operational failure to get here and the gains are fragile. How fragile will quickly become clear if the unassigned and un-investigated file issue starts to reappear.
Our Association conference heard from a community worker and colleagues from Otara NPT and CIB about what was achieved with extra staff well utilised. Delegates from around the country salivated at the thought of what their districts could achieve with a similar injection.
We can just hope that new austerity measures likely to be now visited on the whole public sector don’t see us going in the opposite direction.
We can but wait and see.
