 Thanks for coming this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You would be aware that today in the Townsville District Court, Benjamin Price, a former officer, was convicted on four counts in relation to assault occasioning bodily harm and common assault. He received various terms of imprisonment. The most lengthy term is 27 months imprisonment and all were concurrent. I understand that he is eligible for parole in July of next year. This has been a very disturbing case for us and, again, on behalf of the Queensland Police Service, I apologise both to the victims, their families and the community of Queensland for what is inexcusable behaviour. I'm happy to take any questions that you may have. In terms of the other officers who stood by and witnessed this but didn't report the activities of Benjamin Price, at what stages of disciplinary action are they? Five officers have since resigned in addition to Price themselves. There are three officers where disciplinary processes are now being considered. There are three extra serving officers. That's correct. And what's the time process? We'll just have to await the processes as it runs out. What kind of message does his jail time send to that small minority of officers who do have the cowboy attitude and a very gung-ho when it comes to violence? The issue of use of force by all of our officers is obviously critical to the credibility of the Queensland Police Service. For those who have heard the actions of Price through the court process, I have no doubt that there would be not one police officer or a member of the community who could condone Price's actions in the way that he used excessive force against a number of people. The Queensland Police Service certainly does not condone his conduct in any shape or form and I think it sends a very clear message to any member of our organisation who would even be thinking of that, that they should obey our codes of conduct and our use of force models. What do you say to Price's defence which was that Ellie Beach is a difficult post for any police officer due to a high level of intoxication? Obviously the issue of binge drinking, high levels of intoxication are issues right across the state at certain times and in certain places. Our officers are trained to deal with that in an appropriate professional way. What do you say about the fact that his problems weren't picked up earlier? I mean the comments that he made about wanting to napalm, the polygob, obviously there was clearly issues there that perhaps the system, there was no flagging that he was clearly having problems with? Certainly our systems are designed to try and identify problem officers. We know that because of the price incident that we have to redouble our efforts in that regard and in fact we have been working on this for some time to try and identify key warning signs. As you know some of the areas our people work in are quite challenging in this regard. Night after night as they go out to work they are faced with very, very difficult situations, high levels of drinking, high levels of violence but again it's up to us as an organisation to try and interpret what those warning signs are, moodiness, shortness of temper but it still comes down to supervisors identifying those issues and taking those officers into their care, giving them counselling, making sure that appropriate high level authorities are aware so that we can deal with those officers appropriately. How much of tax pay station for the victims? I don't have those figures with me and in fact some of those amounts of compensation are yet to be determined in the price case. Are you confident that the culture of the L.E.B.T. police station has improved since the time that the price was having it? I'm absolutely sure of that, yes. And what about the community sentiment that obviously it's really important that tourists are, you know, it's a vital industry for them in L.E.B.T. do you think the community will respond positively to the sentiment? I think that we've still got a lot of work to do to regain the credibility that we previously had in that particular community. I would hope that in most communities across the state there is an understanding that whilst the police officer's job is complex and somewhat dangerous at times there is still the expectation and we certainly recognise that officers must meet proper standards of conduct no matter what the situation they're confronted with. Do you acknowledge the difficulty the young officer who blew the whistle on this must have faced at the time? I'm certainly very proud of that officer. I know the whole of the Queensland Police Service is proud of that officer for the stand that she took. She was prepared to get up and say this is not right and bring it to the appropriate knowledge of the senior officers in that area. And as a result of that action was taken her actions are in the finest tradition of our organisation and we congratulate her. We've also taken steps to support her right throughout this whole issue as we would do for any officer in that situation. But what stage do we even know obviously office prides over reacted? When we draw the line between police being provoked and the difference between assault, heavy handedness and restraining people who were drunk and abusive, spitting and that sort of stuff. One of the things that we are careful to do with all of our officers is to help them to understand that the environment of which they work is often complex and is often quite dangerous in terms of the use of force against them. However our training, our codes of conduct are all designed that under the circumstances only an appropriate and reasonable level of force is used to overcome force provided to the officers. Certainly in process cases that was not the case and certainly nowhere near the mark. You can see that it must be frustrating for officers who are clearly provoked in the line of fire so to speak by these abusive sorts of people. But these are professional police officers just as you see ambulance officers, fire officers, doctors, anyone in the professions who has to deal with people at times who are violent, who are unruly. The level of response is always has to be measured and professional. What do you say just to other bad police as far as being a whistleblower because obviously it was very difficult for that young woman to come forward and do what she did but today at least she's seen some justice being done. Absolutely. I say to all police officers if you see another police officer doing the wrong thing and particularly, particularly when levels of violence are perpetrated against victims, community victims, whether or not those victims have actually provoked the initial violence themselves. Those officers should come forward and provide advice to senior officers so the matter can be appropriately dealt with sometimes as we know. I mean people will crack there's no doubt about it but we can do things to help those officers and take the appropriate action whether that's through the disciplinary system or the welfare system in dealing with those issues.