 Okay, good morning, my name is Mike Keating, I'm an Acting Assistant Commissioner with the Queensland Police Service and thank you for being here today and allowing us to share our message in relation to community safety for New Year. I'd like to wish you all a happy New Year of course and I hope your dreams come true, shall we say. Tonight's a great night, it's a family night, it's an opportunity for people to go and enjoy time with their families and friends to go to large places where big crowds gather and that's a great part of the year but it's important that we do that safely and we take account of our own safety and the safety of people around us. So we'll have a large contingent of police deployed across the state tonight, somewhere between 2400-2700 police will be on duty across the state between 6pm and 6am overnight. So that's a large contingent of police, they're there to assist the community to enjoy the night so everybody can have a hassle-free and enjoyable occasion, so let's say it all goes well for them. How many have stationed here in Brisbane? There's around five or six hundred in the Brisbane area, both on the north side and south side, they'll be attending the South Bank area, the Fortitude Valley area and the larger community gathering areas across the CBD and the city. So big numbers there, nearly 600 police down at the Gold Coast and many hundreds are at the larger provincial cities and locations around the state. So there's about 65,000 people at South Bank last year, what are you estimating this evening? The forecast is about 80,000 people for South Bank, about 110,000 to 130,000 people in and around the CBD so it's a big night, many tens of thousands down at the Gold Coast of course and the north coast and the other regional cities, so we've got large numbers of police deployed, they're there to help the community enjoy the night. We ask people to behave responsibly, to act responsibly, if they're having a drink, to drink responsibly. If you're going out with your friends, look after your friends, look after yourself. If you're driving, please don't drink and drive, take a designated driver and reward those people tomorrow for helping you tonight. With the poor weather today, are you expecting less people to be out than the 85 or 80,000 predicted? Well look, that's a decision for everybody to make in their own right and the weather outside today is not that positive but I notice the forecast is for inclement weather in Brisbane today but improving tonight so people shouldn't go out if they're concerned about the weather but you know if the weather's fine, tracks good, go and enjoy yourself. So is the message firm but fair? Look, we've got a large number of police out and about, we won't tolerate anti-social behaviour. You know, people who are out to stop other people enjoying themselves, well that's not acceptable to us, it's not acceptable to the general community but if you're out enjoying yourself, enjoying your friends' company, you've got nothing to worry about the extra police. There are restrictions on liquor, there are designated areas where you can't have liquor. If you're in possession of liquor, you do commit an offence in those places, such as Southbank, so you can't take liquor into Southbank or other designated areas. If you are in possession of liquor, it may be seized by the police, it could be tipped out and you could be issued with a fine. Do you know how many arrests were made on these last year? No I don't, I'm sorry. Is there anything that you're particularly focusing on this year from incidents that might have happened around New Year's last year? Well the message at this time of year is to be responsible for your own behaviour and your own circumstances. If you're out with a group of people, be responsible for your friends. From time to time we do see people who drink too much and can't look after themselves, so drink responsibly, mix your drinks, non-alcoholic drink for every alcoholic drink is a good way to do it, drink plenty of water, have a good meal before you go out or while you're out, but you know just generally enjoy your time with your friends, but be responsible for where you are and what you're doing. Cowbrings can be a source of great frustration, will there be more police at Cowbrings tonight? Well the police will be deployed across the cities in the areas where the community are, so if they need to be rotated or moved to particular places that'll happen quite quickly. You know we do have to be a bit patient later in the night when everybody's trying to get around the city, but public transport is free, so if you can access the public transport that's a really good way to get around the city. If you're needing to wait for a taxi, well you need to be patient and enjoy the company of those people around you as much as you can. Don't jump the queue, you know everybody lines up and we'll have a great night. You had to tell people if people have started drinking now, how bad would it be to wake up in the watch house tomorrow morning? What could they experience in the watch house to make them not do it? I've never met anybody who enjoyed waking up in the watch house on New Year's Day. It's not a really nice way to start your new year. For that matter you don't want to end up in a hospital waiting room or an emergency centre, so you know we can go out and enjoy ourselves. We just need to be sensible about that and if we're with friends take care of each other. We have three police officers injured at the Gold Coast overnight and obviously there's a huge crowd expecting him to bruise when it's a volatile situation. Are you showing out to police in terms of their safety? Well police are well trained. We do a lot of work ensuring that our police know how to handle these situations, how to work with the crowds that are around. It's not a matter of threatening people, it's a matter of working with them, explaining to them what we're doing and why we're doing it. But police are very conscious of their safety and if they need to act in a way to preserve their safety well we endorse that, there's no problems there. And how does the numbers of police out tonight compared to previous years? Is this a big police blitz? Are we seeing more numbers of cops out than we have previously? This would be around the same number of deployments as we'd see every year for these types of major events. I notice in a media conference this morning, Victoria, we're talking about a thousand police across Victoria tonight. Well we've got two and a half thousand people across Queensland deployed to help the community enjoy the night, be safe and everybody gets home and has a great night and that would be a fantastic outcome for all of us. Are there any parts of the country that are going with mounted police and sniffer dogs? Will you have a similar response to that? Our deployments will include uniform police, plain clothes police, specialist police from public safety response team, some of the other specialist areas. There'll be a high presence from the road policing command ensuring our presence is noted and that people who take the risk of driving while they've been drinking that we can meet those people on the road and we can deal with that situation. We've had a really good success this year with our road safety campaign over the Christmas national campaign period and we really want to continue that through until the 3rd of January. What is the total at the moment compared to this time last year? As of today the total is 272 which is eight less to the same stage as last year. It's 19 less on a five year average that where we would see it so that's a good result. Importantly compared to last year we have many less injury traffic crashes than we would have had at the same period last year. So overall it's a good result but there have still been a number of people detected for drink driving, number of people detected for driving whilst under the influence of drugs. We're seeing thousands of people being intercepted and issued with traffic infringement notices for speeding, seat belts, driving whilst using a mobile phone. So the message is clear take your own responsibility, take a measured approach to what you're doing and we'll all get home safe. What court drunkenness will it lead to tonight? Look the circumstances will depend what the charge may be but they'll be, they may be taking to a place of safety and release from there, they may be charged at the White House, just depends on their circumstance. But it's a penalty to consume liquor in a public place or a place where you're not entitled to consume liquor and that's $110 fine. Some people will unfortunately receive the benefit of that fine tonight but please have discretion, we would encourage them to have discretion in appropriate circumstances. Up to 100,000 people coming to the city tonight possibly, that's a huge number of people. This is really kind of a great training exercise for police ahead of what they could expect come G20 this year. Well if we can build on the experiences we've had for many years with these types of events in the city, South Bank has been a large gathering point for large crowds for a whole range of events over the last 25 years and they're all important, one on top of the other, they build our experience, they give us an understanding of the environment. It's a good lesson for any event in the future in the South Bank area and that includes G20. And just what sort of shutdowns on the River and air traffic has that been affected? The Harbour Master has put some restrictions in relation to the use of the river. They're available through the Queensland Transport website. There will be road closures in the general CBD area around Brisbane from time to time as people move in and out. Across the state various areas will have temporary road closures as well. The message there is pretty clear. If you can use public transport do so. At times during the night various bridges in the city will be closed off to vehicles and will be used as primarily as pedestrian access and movement. So be conscious of temporary road closures, take instructions from the police and other transport people that you see around in terms of moving around the city and overall we just hope everybody enjoys the night and we all start 2014 on a great note. Is there any particular area that police are concerned about this year? Anywhere where there's a large gathering is always important to us because there's families about, there's community members about so they're important. So South Bank is a big area, Fortitude Valley, any of the drink safe precincts around the state but so too are any areas where people would gather and from time to time we see incidents that occur in private homes where parties spill out and so forth. So we'll be mindful of what's happening across the city, across the state. And we'll be aware of the circumstances that arise. Great. Hope you all have a new .