Victorian police officers have been given the go ahead by the fair work commission to ramp up their industrial action.
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00:00 For context, they've already been doing things like, for example, stopping motorists and
00:06 warning them of speed cameras coming up with the intention of hitting the government where
00:11 it hurts in their hip pocket by essentially reducing the fines, the revenue that they
00:15 can get from fines.
00:17 And that industrial action started about a fortnight ago.
00:22 Now today what we're hearing is a proposal for escalated action that first the members
00:28 of the Police Association Union will have to vote on to see if they want to go ahead
00:34 with that and that's expected to take place within the next week.
00:37 But if it does go ahead, then from the start of next year, we'll essentially see police
00:42 officers here turning a blind eye to the majority of driving offences, excluding really serious
00:49 offences like driving under the influence.
00:52 They've also said that they will refuse to take on additional shifts at major events
00:57 like the Australian Open, which we know is coming up in January, and that might see a
01:01 reduced police presence at those events or them having to take officers off of the beat
01:07 to cover those shifts.
01:09 So a pretty significant escalation of the action that's already been going on here and
01:15 yeah those are only actually a couple of a long list of additional bans that members
01:20 are going to be voting on in the coming days.
01:22 Bridget, how likely is it that the majority of union members will back this move?
01:29 Yeah well Union Secretary Wayne Gatt says he's very confident that the majority of members
01:34 will vote to pass the escalation.
01:38 Really he said that it's the most resolute he's ever seen members to push ahead with
01:45 their demands for things like pay increases and better working conditions and that they're
01:52 really frustrated that in this first fortnight they've seen no progress towards those demands
01:58 that they've made.
02:00 He also pointed out that the escalated action in a sense has been designed by the members
02:08 themselves, that it was informed by suggestions from hundreds of officers across the state
02:14 as to what that escalation should look like.
02:19 Also I should point out it's a really interesting time for this all to be happening because
02:23 this year actually marks a hundred years since arguably the state's most historic or most
02:28 dramatic police industrial action in 1923 in Melbourne when officers walked off the
02:34 job and essentially handed the reins over to the criminals and it was a pretty interesting
02:40 couple of days here in Melbourne a hundred years ago.
02:43 Now Wayne Gatt, the Secretary of the Police Association has pointed out obviously that
02:48 this is a very different circumstance, police won't be walking off the job and that they
02:52 are prioritising maintaining public safety but he did say that it provides an important
02:57 lesson to the government that they really shouldn't be turning their backs on the demands
03:02 of a force that they rely on so extensively.
03:05 So we're just going to have to wait and see if the government heeds that warning.
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