AFP’s organised crime, anti-corruption operations scaled back in forecast $184m budget cut
THE Australian Federal Police has been forced to cut back on organised crime work, fraud and anti-corruption operations and child exploitation prevention after a forecast budget squeeze of more than $184 million this year.
AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin told a Senate estimates hearing this morning that the impact of the funding cut would be spread so as not to impact on any one area.
“Obviously reductions in our budget mostly apply to our discretionary funding so that is areas that fund a large portion of our anti-narcotics, our organised crime work, our general operational work, our fraud and anti-corruption, our child exploitation,” he said.
“What we do is, obviously we don’t want to impact on any area; we would have to look at our own prioritisation within the organisation and reduce accordingly.”
Mr Colvin also revealed about 117 officers had lost their jobs and admitted that there were AFP officers who were working second jobs.
Mr Colvin said negotiations between the AFP Association and management were continuing after the first pay proposal, for a 2 per cent pay rise every year, was rejected by a wide margin.
That means AFP officers have not had a pay rise in 18 months.
Despite the budgeted decrease in AFP funding, Justice Minister Michael Keenan has claimed the government is giving the force “the largest single investment in the past decade”, a $321 million, four year deal which was announced before the May
