Maitland MP Jenny Aitchison fears her electorate has been “forgotten” by the NSW government after the district failed to get a single new recruit from the latest batch of police graduates.
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Four months after a major re-engineering of the NSW Police resulted in the birth of the Port Stephens-Hunter Police District, Ms Aitchison said Maitland was still three officers short of the 10 promised by senior management.
Neighbouring district Hunter Valley received three new officers, while Lake Macquarie and Newcastle City received one each out of the 234 new recruits.
Ms Aitchison, who is also the opposition spokesperson for the prevention of domestic violence, said Maitland’s booming population and high domestic violence rates meant the city needed the extra recruits urgently.
“We have the highest domestic violence rates [in the state] and we haven’t even received our promised officers. We need more police on the ground,” she said.
Ms Aitchison’s latest call comes two weeks after she said publicly that Maitland’s lack of police had forced officers to choose between which lives to save.
Her political sparring partner, Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter Scot MacDonald, hit out at the comments and said domestic violence rates had remained stable in the latest Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures. Ms Aitchison returned serve over the latest lack of recruits.
“Clearly Mr MacDonald is not in touch with the community and they see him as ineffective in advocating for our community. He doesn’t live in the Hunter, he lives in Guyra. It’s just more evidence that the Berejiklian government doesn’t care about our Hunter community,” she said.
Mr MacDonald said any notion that the government had forgotten the Maitland area was inaccurate, saying that allocation of specific police wasn’t the government’s role.
“It’s not a political move from an MP or a minister,” he said. “We don’t step in and say this is how you should be running your command.”
Mr MacDonald said he regularly kept in touch with local police commanders, including a meeting with head of the Port Stephens-Hunter Police District Superintendent Craig Jackson four weeks ago.
“We’ll keep pumping them through Goulburn [police academy] and keep resourcing our police,” Mr MacDonald said.
