Friday, 23 February 2024
Subjects: Police Minister’s visit to Young, rural and regional crime inquiry, new preschool for Boorowa, mock evacuation in Cowra, need for a heavy vehicle bypass in Temora.
E&OE…
Rich Spence: And right now we welcome into the studio Member for Cootamundra Steph Cooke. Good morning.
Steph Cooke: Good morning, Rich. It's great to be back in the studio with you, I think the last time we spoke I was in Parliament House...
Rich Spence: That's right.
Steph Cooke: It was a sitting week, so it's great to be back home in the electorate and able to sit here with you in person.
Rich Spence: And you've been doing a lot in those past couple of weeks and none bigger, I guess you could say, than the Police Minister's visit, and you touched on the need for a parliamentary inquiry into rural and regional crime as well as police staffing numbers?
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. I always take the opportunity during a parliamentary sitting week to welcome and invite ministers into the Cootamundra electorate. And I was very pleased to welcome the Police Minister out here to meet with local officers at the Young Police Station.
I pressed upon her the need for a brand-new police station in Young; that was a commitment that I gave to the people of the Hilltops area and beyond. It's not just about the Hilltops when it comes to the work that police do in and around this community, and in the lead-up to the last election, the Coalition made a commitment of a $19 million brand new police station for Young, should we be re-elected. That didn't transpire, but the need for a new police station still exists.
Rich Spence: It does, yes.
Steph Cooke: That's quite clear. And so it was an opportunity for me to meet with the Police Minister. We spent a couple of hours in my office going through a long list of issues related to her portfolio. It was a constructive meeting, and she gave me a lot of her time, and certainly took on board everything that I had to say. And then we walked up the main street and around to the police station, so it was an opportunity for her to get a feel for what the township of Young is like, and really understand what our needs are in that policing space. And then we spent a good hour or so, with the officers at the Young Police Station.
She toured the station, so has now had that firsthand experience of what it is like to try and work in that environment. We have a lot of officers there, the building is split into two sections where you've got general duties on one side of the street, you've got the detectives on the other, and there's been garages converted into office space for other specialist teams.
It's just simply not acceptable in this day and age that our police officers are working in that environment there. And so it was an opportunity for me to primarily push up on that. But of course, as you mentioned, and I'm sure your listeners will have heard this over and over again since October last year, when the Country Mayors Association launched a campaign calling for an independent parliamentary inquiry with bipartisan support, to have a look at regional policing, its resourcing, and what more needs to be done in that space, noting many of the challenges that we are facing. So when the Country Mayors did that last October, I was out of the blocks within about 24 hours saying I absolutely support this push.
And there's been other MPs supporting this: Adam Marshall, the Member for Northern Tablelands, Paul Toole, the Member for Bathurst just up the road from us here who is also the Shadow Police Minister – the three of us have been relentless in calling for this inquiry. We've been joined by the likes of the New South Wales CWA, New South Wales Farmers’, the New South Wales Police Association.
So this has widespread support from really credible stakeholders. At the end of the day, our police officers in regional areas are doing a magnificent job against some very difficult circumstances. Resourcing absolutely needs to be looked at.
Here's an interesting statistic for yourself and your listeners: we have around 17,000 police officers in this state. There are six regions that they belong to; three in metropolitan, three in regional. The three regional cover 90 per cent of the land mass in New South Wales, and yet they have only one third of those 17,000 officers. It's simply not enough.
Rich Spence: No, it certainly isn't.
Steph Cooke: We need a better model; a better distribution of officers that meets the needs of our communities. In the southern region, on average, there are 14 officers assigned to our police stations. In the city, it's 69 officers per station. So I'm in utter admiration of our police officers.
They do a magnificent job. We struggle at times to fill vacancies, and they're doing the best they can with what they have. But we need to have another look at this, have a look at the model, because at the end of the day, people in our communities deserve to live here safely.
They deserve not to be the victims of crime. And anecdotally, people are reporting to me that either they or someone close to them or someone they know, has been the victim of a crime, and increasingly so, particularly in the last 12 months.
So this is something that we will continue to push up on. It's not the Police Minister's view, I need to make that clear, and I do so very respectfully. She made it very clear to me that she saw no benefit in having such an inquiry into regional policing. We respectfully disagree on that. But nonetheless, it was wonderful to have her in our community and be able to listen to me on behalf of our communities, about what we need here in the electorate.
Rich Spence: And you mentioned about the policing numbers and probably recruitment being a bit lower than it should be or needs to be. I suppose a good change in recent times, if I've heard correctly, is that new recruits can get paid training at Goulburn now for the duration, which has got to be a plus.
Steph Cooke: Absolutely, I welcome that change. It's really important, particularly for those people that want to make a career change, and they're already receiving an income from what they do. They might have a young family that they provide for, so making that transition from one career to another as easy as possible, and without financial burden, is an important step.
Rich Spence: Especially the financial services and the health care and all that sort of thing as well.
Steph Cooke: Oh, absolutely. And there are of course many, many benefits to being a member of the New South Wales Police Force. And I expect that over the months ahead there will be a greater focus on their salaries, and consideration as to whether they are paid enough for the work that they do, so we'll watch that space with great interest.
When it comes to our local police in the 28 police stations across the Cootamundra electorate, many of them are one or two police officer stations, none of them operate 24/7, and that's in stark contrast to the metropolitan areas. I probably need to clarify that there's always a 24/7 response, so if you ring triple zero, the police will come. But we don't have any police stations with their doors open 24/7. And we know this is an issue primarily in Cowra at present, and we will continue to push up on that.
But may I say in closing on this issue, thank you very much to every single serving officer in the stations across the Cootamundra electorate. You do a wonderful job day-in day-out, and we are very grateful for your service.
Rich Spence: You're quite right there, Steph. And hopefully with the Police Minister's visit – not sure where her electorate is, but assuming it might be in the city – she has a better appreciation of regional policing with the visit to Young.
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. As someone who travels to Sydney regularly for parliament, we're not the easiest place here in the Cootamundra electorate to reach from the metropolitan area. So for a minister in any portfolio to come out, is a big logistical effort. And having been a minister myself, I truly appreciate what that looks like, and having the Police Minister make that effort and come out and see me and get an appreciation for what it is to live and work in our communities is really, really important. And I'm grateful for it.
Rich Spence: For sure. And moving on, in Cowra, you were at a mock evacuation exercise. What was that all about?
Steph Cooke: People might recall, just to set a bit of context here, that during 2022, we experienced widespread flooding across the state; the Lachlan Valley and down through Cowra and Forbes and those communities. They were impacted by flooding, no question. And with respect to Cowra, when the Lachlan River reaches a certain point, the town gets cut in half. And what we didn't have in 2022 was appropriate evacuation centres for people to go to who were at risk of inundation, and really needed to evacuate their properties.
Essentially, there was nowhere for them to go. We didn't have appropriate evacuation centres. That's now changed in Cowra, which is absolutely fantastic. And thanks to the Cowra Bowling Club and the Cowra Golf Club, we now have an evacuation centre on the east and on the west side of the river. So it doesn't matter which side you reside on, there is now a very well-equipped evacuation centre for people to go to, on either side.
So what occurred in Cowra this week was what I would describe as a role play, where all of the agencies and the not-for-profit organisations, came together and played through what a town evacuation might look like. And so there were people – who were just volunteers – that came to this mock evacuation centre at the Cowra Golf Club, and they were triaged as if it were a real emergency.
And so this gave our local volunteers and agencies an opportunity to play it out as it might unfold in real circumstances. And we know that coming out of the flood inquiry when I was the minister, there were many opportunities identified, where there could be improvement. And this is part of that improvement process and I welcome it. And now the people of Cowra know that if there is an emergency and they do need to evacuate, Cowra Bowling Club and the Cowra Golf Club are your places to go to.
Rich Spence: That's great to know and great to have those evacuation points. But now we still need the government to look at Wyangala Dam to try to mitigate the flooding risk.
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. And thank you for raising that. It remains a top priority of mine; I will continue fighting for it. Raising the wall of Wyangala Dam by that 10 metres will go a long way to ensuring that Cowra doesn't get cut in half to start with. Not to mention the really terrible impacts that it has downstream of Cowra through the likes of Forbes and other communities that get that terrible inundation when we get big floods. So that absolutely needs to be a priority of this government.
Rich Spence: Of course. And big news for Boorowa Central School, a new preschool has been announced.
Steph Cooke: This is exciting, and for everyone listening in Boorowa this morning, this is a fantastic announcement. Of course, it comes off the back of the announcement of government funding for the final detailed design and costing work around the Boorowa pipeline in the water space.
So we are really starting to see some traction in the Boorowa community now, and I'm very grateful to everyone who's given me their support since Boorowa came into the Cootamundra electorate last year. And I gave that community an undertaking that I would prioritise their issues. And now we are seeing a new preschool to be built in Boorowa on the grounds of the Boorowa Central School. This is a wonderful announcement; we know that for a long time now, there's a long waiting list for families to access preschool in that community.
We have the BEE there of course, the Boorowa Early Education Centre; they do a wonderful job, Shauny and her team, absolutely phenomenal work. The difficulty we've got is that we've got higher demand than we do places. And so this will mean that we've got two high quality, fantastic services operating in that Boorowa community, of course drawing also from the smaller villages.
And it means that our littlest learners will get the best start to their education. I'm very grateful to the government for listening to us in relation to this issue. We are one of just 49 in rural New South Wales to be part of this announcement. It's fantastic news. It'll be up and running we think by about 2027. I've still got a lot of questions around how it's all going to roll out over the next couple of years, and to that extent, I'll be seeking a meeting with the Education Minister, not just to say thank you on behalf of our communities, but to seek some answers to other questions we have.
Rich Spence: Sounds absolutely terrific. And moving to the other side of Young to Temora, they've got a long-time issue with trucks going down the main street, B-doubles and all sorts of sizes, including stock trucks; a bypass desperately needed.
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. This has been a high priority for the community of Temora for many years. And the Regional Roads and Transport Minister is well aware of this as a project. She's met with Temora Shire Council previously in relation to this issue. And so Temora Shire Council has developed three options. And what they're seeking to do is sit down with Transport for New South Wales, the department, and discuss these three options and really explore which one of them is worthwhile taking forward for detailed community consultation, which will absolutely be required.
And this would be a major change to the way that traffic flows through that shire. And for over 12 months now, the Department of Transport has just refused to engage with Temora Shire Council on this. We're not asking them for any money at this point in time. We're asking them for assistance with what the plan and the community consultation might look like going forward.
And the fact that they would not even return phone calls and emails of the shire, it's just unacceptable. And so earlier this week I called upon the Minister – we shouldn't have to do this, it's very unfortunate – but I called upon the Minister to direct her department to engage with one of our councils.
So I understand that there's been some movement on that front now, thanks to both the mayor and myself calling for that engagement to occur. And I'll be keeping a very close eye on this one going forward, because simply asking the department to do their job – it shouldn't come to this quite frankly. And we are hoping for a better response and better customer service.
Rich Spence: And the issue with Temora is they've got the North-South Goldfields and you've got the East-West Burley Griffin Way traffic and all carrying trucks. And they don't have the option like Young has of Cloete Street and Lovell Street – using other streets because they just don't have that option.
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. And the impact of that, of course, is that you've got enormous vehicles coming East-West down that Burley Griffin Way as you mentioned, and they go through the roundabout and that's an intersection with the Goldfields Way, which is the North-South route. And that is the main street of Temora. And to your point, for a long time there's been safety concerns raised about what it means to have young children, mothers with prams, elderly people that might be on a walker, or they might be on their motorised scooter, these are real concerns.
And not to mention the odour; if you are a business person in Temora, you don't need every half hour to have stock trucks coming past your front door if you're a food venue. And from a tourism perspective and a visitor perspective, it's less than ideal. We need to find a solution. Temora Shire Council has been very proactive; they're trying to work through this on behalf of both residents and visitors. The least the department can do is return phone calls and emails and try and assist.
Rich Spence: Yeah, of course. Glad you are moving forward on that one. And we're out of time now, so thank you for coming along.
Steph Cooke: It goes so quickly when I'm here with you, Rich. It's wonderful to have caught up with you again and I'll catch up with you soon.
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