Andersen Ginny; Mitchell MarkHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Chair and thank you very much to the chair of the committee. We had a good session and the Commissioner of Police gave a good outline of all of the challenges. The key challenge that was sort of identified is that Police—with a $2.2 billion budget $1.7 billion of which is in staff—is that they're facing into a 6.5 percent budget cut so that's really looking at personnel. So we're quite keen to understand what is front line and what is not front line given that context. I'd just like a bit of clarity from the Minister in relation to that I'm a bit confused. Today we established that it's for the commissioner to determine what is front line or not but also the Minister today said that 111 call responders were not front-line staff. So I'd just like to confirm if those 111 callers are front line or not.In addition to that I'd also like to know whether authorised officers are front line or not. And in addition to that also those who answer the one 105 reports in communication centres are they front line or not?Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police): First of all can I just acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee the outstanding work that he does chairing that committee—it is important; you have got a very heavy workload. I know that you're taking a very bipartisan approach and I think that's important with the type of legislation that you're dealing with because it's around public safety and security. Can I acknowledge him becoming an uncle again and I'm hoping that Lachlan follows in his mother's footsteps into the police service.I just do want to acknowledge our police force. Without a doubt they're doing an outstanding job protecting and serving our communities and they've done it under a fairly difficult set of circumstances certainly in 2022-23 because we have seen a massive increase—an ongoing massive increase—in violent retail crime we've seen an increase in family harm incidents and we've seen an increase in mental health call-outs. That's put massive pressure on their services.One of the things as the incoming Minister that I've been very focused on is making sure that we get the agencies responsible and the most appropriate agency to actually deal with for example mental health call-outs; being able to actually attend that and free up our front-line police officers to get back on their core role—and that is the protecting and the serving of the community that they joined the police to do.In terms of the Hon Ginny Andersen's question it's actually for the police commissioner. The police Minister does not interfere nor does he or she have any say over how the police commissioner deploys his or her staff or how he deploys them operationally. That is for him. But the one thing that we've been very clear about as the incoming Government is that we want to see resources pushed to the front line. She's right in that under the previous Government in the 2022-23 year there's been a big investment in numbers but their core funding has not increased. In fact quite the opposite. They were asked to fund from baseline the competency service increment payment. It's an incremental payment that goes to police officers as they advance through their career and it recognises their experience. As an incoming Government we became aware of that and I'm pleased to announce for the member that we have decided that we would fund that the Government would fund that again that we'd not ask the Police to find that from their baseline which means that it's freed up more resources and more money to be able to support the additional numbers and their deployment.