Press conference regarding NSW Police D&D scheme

On Thursday night, the Police Association of NSW issued a statement to members that indicated that the Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione had, during a media conference, criticised payments to individual officers under the NSW Police Death and Disability Scheme.

The Commissioner was quoted in the statement as having said "I have seen the payment, they are phone numbers."

Unfortunately, these quotes are not correct and at no stage during Thursday's media conference did the Commissioner make any reference to individual payments to officers, let alone criticise those payments.

For the record, the Commissioner referred only to figures quoted by the Police Minister which related to the escalating cost of the total scheme in successive years.

This is what Minister Gallacher said.'

"It's quite significant. In fact to give you an idea, this will bring down the running costs quite significantly. If I can give you an idea, just last year alone, if you couple together death and disability, workers comp, top up and hindsight adjustment - $460 million dollars last year.

"This year, in exactly the same areas, workers comp, death and disability, top up, hindsight, $762 million.

"Next year bring down quite considerably, my understanding is we will see it back down I think about 66 million next year."

This is what the Police Commissioner said.

"It is most important to understand that from my perspective this is really about the more we can get back, the better it'll be. And you've heard some of the figures quoted by the Minister.......you know, they're telephone numbers. They're extraordinarily big amounts of money. He quoted a figure there from my perspective when he talked about seven hundred and sixty odd million.

"That's approaching half of all the money I will spend this year on police salaries."


For the record, video of the extended media conference with both the Minister and the Police Commissioner can be seen here.

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