Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average persons never
Speaker 1: exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys, staid,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. Today's guest
Speaker 1: doctor Vince Hurley, is a friend and former colleague. We
Speaker 1: first met when he was running the New South Wales
Speaker 1: Police Detective's training course and I was lecturing on homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: The thing that struck me about Vince from the start
Speaker 1: was what a friendly person he was. But what I
Speaker 1: really admired was how passionate he was about all things policing.
Speaker 1: He truly believed in what he was doing and passed
Speaker 1: that enthusiasm onto young detectives we were training. As I
Speaker 1: got to know Vince better over the years, I realized
Speaker 1: he not only had the street smarts of a good cop,
Speaker 1: but he also had the ability to look at things
Speaker 1: through an academic perspective. Armed with street smarts, academic qualifications
Speaker 1: and passion makes Vince a person whose opinion counts when
Speaker 1: talking all things law and order. Vince spent twenty nine
Speaker 1: years as an operational police officer in the New South
Speaker 1: Wales Police and retired as a detective superintendent when someone
Speaker 1: literally threw him off the roof. Sorry Vince. He now,
Speaker 1: amongst other things, lectures at Macquarie University Department of Security
Speaker 1: Studies and Criminology, specializing in the contemporary role of the
Speaker 1: police and policing within criminology theories. Now, if you don't
Speaker 1: believe me about how passionate this guy is, have her
Speaker 1: listened to this extract from a recent appearance on the
Speaker 1: ABC's Q and A show. This is how Vince addresses
Speaker 1: state and federal politicians on the issue of domestic violence.
Speaker 2: How dare you? How dare you go into politics? In
Speaker 2: an environment like this, when one woman is murdered every
Speaker 2: four days and all you two can do is immediately
Speaker 2: talk about politics. That is just disgraceful. Is it any
Speaker 2: wonder frontline services aren't getting the money that they want.
Speaker 1: Okay, Vince Hurley, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Gary.
Speaker 1: Good to see you haven't lost your passion.
Speaker 2: That deserved it. Ah, they just deserved it. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't even a gotcha moment. I just walked straight into it.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I don't recognize it angry man anymore.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I watched it, and I think good on
Speaker 1: your Vince. Yeah, don't sit on the don't sit on
Speaker 1: the fence with this one. But there was something that
Speaker 1: obviously stirred up the anger in you and the frustration
Speaker 1: and Q and A. For people that don't watch the show,
Speaker 1: it's usually a controversial topic that they'll have a forum
Speaker 1: of people discussing it. They were talking about domestic violence
Speaker 1: and murders there, and you're in the audience and they
Speaker 1: asked for your opinion, and boy did you give give
Speaker 1: them your opinion? But what was it about that forum
Speaker 1: or that topic that set you off? What was it?
Speaker 2: So I've been involved in domestic violence. My interest dated
Speaker 2: in the police actually not long after we first met
Speaker 2: down on the detective's course. I've been in that area
Speaker 2: now for about thirty years. But of course, as you
Speaker 2: would know, in the police, nothing's very well publicized outside
Speaker 2: of the organization. So I was sitting in the audience,
Speaker 2: and what happened was I was invited down by the producer.
Speaker 2: And I've been on it before in twenty and twenty
Speaker 2: two when they were first floating suggesting about the coercive
Speaker 2: control laws. And how it goes is that you are
Speaker 2: asked the producer says to you. Depends how the conversation
Speaker 2: pans out, depend on whether you actually get asked a
Speaker 2: question by the host, in this case Patricia Carvellus. So
Speaker 2: I was sitting in the audience and where they started
Speaker 2: bickering amongst themselves, the politicians, I sort of turned off
Speaker 2: and I wasn't listening. And then Patricia Carvella said, now
Speaker 2: we've got a criminologist in the audience, and I said,
Speaker 2: bloody hell, that's me. Better switch one, because I just
Speaker 2: turned off as soon as I started talking arguing. And
Speaker 2: then she's turned to me and asked me the question
Speaker 2: and then because of the you know, their minds that
Speaker 2: polluted with the sewer of politics that they started talking
Speaker 2: about politics. I just it triggered me. Had they not
Speaker 2: done that, I probably wouldn't have reacted the way I did.
Speaker 2: But certainly the way that they you know, all the
Speaker 2: motherhood statements they said about about politics and being injured
Speaker 2: women's issues. You know, they say some things are above politics.
Speaker 2: You would think this would be the murder of women
Speaker 2: would be one most definitely, but it's not for them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: They didn't even give it a thought. A lot juveniles
Speaker 2: in the sandpit arguing about who had the best policy.
Speaker 2: And I think they failed to understand is we don't
Speaker 2: care about their politics. We're just worried about the murder
Speaker 2: of women, you know. And yeah, I was just gobsmacked.
Speaker 2: And it was just that total absence of consciousness about
Speaker 2: you know, one woman being murdered in every four days,
Speaker 2: and I think we're up to about ninety now or
Speaker 2: thereabouts this year, that you know, we're just but also
Speaker 2: bidget McKenzie, who was a woman I thought would have
Speaker 2: rushed to the sister's defense about women being murdered and
Speaker 2: didn't even batter an eye lid about it. So it
Speaker 2: was the dismissive perspective.
Speaker 1: And that's what you wanted to get the cross that lives.
Speaker 1: We're talking about people's lives here and people losing their lives.
Speaker 1: A couple of other comments you've made in the show
Speaker 1: in that in the discussion that and I'll just read
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do it with the
Speaker 1: passion you did, But I went to twenty domestics in
Speaker 1: one night when I was in the police, I held
Speaker 1: a ten year old child in my arms who died
Speaker 1: from the stabbing from her father. So those are comments
Speaker 1: that you made during that show too. These are the
Speaker 1: type of things when you see it, when you see
Speaker 1: actually what happens, I can see why you get angry
Speaker 1: at politicians playing a political game. It should be a
Speaker 1: bipartisan approacess to stop this. And is that the type
Speaker 1: of thing that was triggering for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because you would know from our time in
Speaker 2: the police where you were taken back to a specific
Speaker 2: time or issue, and that ten year old child A
Speaker 2: held in my arms. It was a Sunday morning. We
Speaker 2: just happened to be driving past a black by name
Speaker 2: of Mick down at Werrington. What I was attached to
Speaker 2: Penrith detectives just happen to be driving down the street
Speaker 2: and we've got to call that a possible homicide had
Speaker 2: taken place and we're just lucky to be there up
Speaker 2: and the dad had stabbed the child about well multiple times,
Speaker 2: and rather than wait for the ambulance, I picked up
Speaker 2: the child and went out to the front yard and
Speaker 2: she took a last breadth lath breadth when I with her.
Speaker 2: But it was that very visceral, very vivid moment that
Speaker 2: takes you back to the reality of what it is,
Speaker 2: because you know, I think those people politicians, they swung
Speaker 2: around Parliament House and they're removed from the main parliament
Speaker 2: in Australia, which is the Parliament of the street, they
Speaker 2: lose contact with what the reality is. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: they're all bad at all, but I think that they
Speaker 2: lose touch with, you know, what it's like for the
Speaker 2: average person in the street. And yep, understand that they
Speaker 2: may never have that experience that you and I've had
Speaker 2: dealing with victims and seeing multiple traumas, but that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they should not have less compassion for the
Speaker 2: general population.
Speaker 1: And especially when they're in the position of power too.
Speaker 1: The power comes responsibility and they should embrace that and
Speaker 1: understand what they're dealing with. So, look, it got a reaction.
Speaker 1: We're going to deep dive in and break that whole
Speaker 1: situation down further. But last time we met was only
Speaker 1: only a week or so ago, when I bumped into
Speaker 1: the sixtieth anniversary for Rainbow Lodge. Yeah, it's not the
Speaker 1: type of place. It's a Rainbow Lodge do outstanding work,
Speaker 1: and it's not the type of place you expect to
Speaker 1: see two x police officers because it's helping people who
Speaker 1: have been released from jail and get their life back
Speaker 1: in order and do some fantastic work. And it was
Speaker 1: great to see a police officer there. But what an
Speaker 1: impressive group of people look.
Speaker 2: To have the Deputy Commissioner of Corrections there. That's the
Speaker 2: state member for Housing I think it is, and I
Speaker 2: can't remember if the local member was there, but as
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, it was bipartisan. You know, we're there
Speaker 2: for the cause for you know, trying to do something
Speaker 2: about these violent men who come out of custody or
Speaker 2: sentences or prison to try and help them back into
Speaker 2: society to reduce domestic violence and hopefully hold them up
Speaker 2: as some type of leader within their community. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it is, And you rightly say, you know, twenty thirty
Speaker 2: years ago, I would never have envigied myself going to
Speaker 2: an organization like that, having been in the police. And
Speaker 2: I think as you get older, you know, your views
Speaker 2: and perspectives change.
Speaker 1: Well, I know since I've left the police, so I
Speaker 1: look at fighting crime in a different way. In Plolee,
Speaker 1: it was sort of a narrow focus. The crime happens,
Speaker 1: you enforce the law, You put people in custody. You
Speaker 1: don't really consider what happens to them when they're in custody,
Speaker 1: and you wait for the next next case to come along.
Speaker 1: But people like Claude Robertson at Rainbow Lodge and hundreds
Speaker 1: of people that we could mention that, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: crossed paths with how much difference they make in fighting crime.
Speaker 1: You can't. And I know it's a saying that I've
Speaker 1: heard you say often. You can't fix a problem through arrest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's other ways of fighting crime, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, And I said that as I said Q
Speaker 2: and A, you know the problem you just can't you
Speaker 2: arrest your way out of it? And Claude and like
Speaker 2: the thousands of NGOs around Australia, all in this area
Speaker 2: trying to do the right thing, largely with lack of
Speaker 2: government support. Now there and they're doing the job that
Speaker 2: government should be taking at least a good portion of
Speaker 2: responsibility and funding them for this particular role. But to
Speaker 2: go to Rainbow Lodge and I'd never heard of it
Speaker 2: until twelve months ago. To go there and have been
Speaker 2: a number of times like yourself, and to sit and
Speaker 2: listen to the people who are coming through the system
Speaker 2: or have been in the system sometimes for decades, it
Speaker 2: is Yeah, it's almost counterintuitive. You go, wow, you know
Speaker 2: there is life beyond Mount Dat, Saint Mary's, Blacktown and Penrith.
Speaker 2: When I was out there, and if I was out
Speaker 2: there then and I had come across any of those individuals,
Speaker 2: you and I particularly just arrest them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, just a rest them, you realize, And like,
Speaker 1: how how powerful was the young bloke that spoke the
Speaker 1: last one, Like you've got politicians, you've got the retired
Speaker 1: judges speaking, and then this fellow that had been through
Speaker 1: the through the system and he talked about what Rainbow
Speaker 1: Lodge did to him and give him a sense of
Speaker 1: purpose and direction in life. And it was inspiring.
Speaker 2: It was And I'm actually I won't mention his name,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to get him come and talk to
Speaker 2: my students next year. I was blown away. So even
Speaker 2: if it's just one person, that makes a difference. The
Speaker 2: impact that he will have on his peers, and you know,
Speaker 2: his life story is something that we will never understand
Speaker 2: or experience, and he will be a fantastic father, just
Speaker 2: like Claude, for the next generation. And it is really
Speaker 2: it is inspiring. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I think with all that's happened, I consider myself fortunate
Speaker 1: to see that side of fighting fighting crime from a
Speaker 1: different perspective, about the gun without the handcuffs, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they make such a difference. Now, tell us about before
Speaker 1: we get into the academic Vince Early, and I've got
Speaker 1: to say, doctor Vince Early, it's choking on the words.
Speaker 2: But never believe everything you've read Gary before.
Speaker 1: You decided to become smart. You're a cop, Why do
Speaker 1: you join the cops? Look?
Speaker 2: Actually I got a credit Mum and Dad for that.
Speaker 2: They thought it suited my personality.
Speaker 1: Knows what suits your personality.
Speaker 2: Clearly there wasn't enough mental help supporting those early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Meta give him to the police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. Plenty of mad people in there,
Speaker 2: as we know, as I say, a double D, not
Speaker 2: just mad mad. So they thought it suited my personality
Speaker 2: variety of the day, and I never gave much thought
Speaker 2: to it. You know, when you join, it was just exciting,
Speaker 2: it was interesting. I never really had a career path
Speaker 2: plotted out. I just drifted from enjoyment to enjoyment to enjoyment.
Speaker 2: So hostygen negotiated undercovered drugs down the D's course where
Speaker 2: I met you, and I must say in all sincerity,
Speaker 2: and the viewers might be surprised to listen, but I
Speaker 2: really appreciated all the years that you came down and
Speaker 2: lectured on the Detective's course which I coordinated. There was
Speaker 2: always hard to get police to come down, even in
Speaker 2: service for their own people, but it was an experience
Speaker 2: that I could never give them, so you you know,
Speaker 2: over the years coming down, So you know, I hate
Speaker 2: to publicly admit it. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1: Just repeat that a little bit loud and a little
Speaker 1: bit clearer. No, I look, I think, and that's what
Speaker 1: and the people that went before me, the Russell Oxford
Speaker 1: and Paul Magers, Paul Jacob and that used to fill
Speaker 1: that role. And then passing that, passing that expertise down,
Speaker 1: I think it's so important passing that lineage down, their training,
Speaker 1: the things that you learned out on the streets. So
Speaker 1: thank you for the privilege. I enjoyed that very much.
Speaker 1: So it was good. Okay, getting back to the point,
Speaker 1: getting back, getting back to getting back to the point.
Speaker 1: What was the point I joined the police? Why did
Speaker 1: you join the police? But hostage and negotiation that that's
Speaker 1: an interesting field to work.
Speaker 2: Oh, look, it was fascinating. I was there for eight years.
Speaker 2: They didn't have any full time hostage negotiators then, but
Speaker 2: they do now. But I would like to think that
Speaker 2: once upon a time they're very selective as to who
Speaker 2: they chose to be hostage negotiating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what you're saying without saying, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fascinating. It was really fascinating. You know,
Speaker 2: I went to a lot of people. Don't do a
Speaker 2: lot of suicide intervention. You do a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are taken in US, who are in strongholds who
Speaker 2: are wanted for violent crimes, and of course psychiatric or
Speaker 2: people undergoing psychotic episodes holding other people hostage, generally members
Speaker 2: of their family. So that was yeah, that was just
Speaker 2: an amazing experience. I was on SBS a few months
Speaker 2: ago now about witness or mind matters. I think it
Speaker 2: was called about the role of being in a shader
Speaker 2: and how victims and victims and witnesses recall things under
Speaker 2: times of stress. But certainly I remember there was a
Speaker 2: story of we got called out to Danar Kouma and
Speaker 2: there was an offender wanted for an armed hold up
Speaker 2: and it was in our house, and it was in
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere, so there was no mobile phone coverage,
Speaker 2: and we go down and the tactical operations units surround
Speaker 2: the place at about six am, and then we had
Speaker 2: this thing called the Ball of Death seth.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we changed that name. The Ball of Death.
Speaker 2: Yes, And it was literally just like a speaker, a
Speaker 2: small pa speaker encased in metal and attached to it.
Speaker 2: There was about, oh, maybe I don't know, fifty meters
Speaker 2: of a wire and you could actually speak and it
Speaker 2: would amplify for the for the speaker and because of
Speaker 2: no mobive phone coverage and we didn't know the phone
Speaker 2: number of the house, the t o U went in
Speaker 2: about eight am and they smashed a window and they
Speaker 2: tossed the ball of death in and we're hiding behind
Speaker 2: a hedge, as you do, yes, as you did, And
Speaker 2: then we turned on the sirehen. It waked the bloke
Speaker 2: up and he was not happy. So we said, you know,
Speaker 2: we are the police. We need you to come out.
Speaker 2: And it was dead silence, and we're waiting for about
Speaker 2: thirty seconds and he's grabbed it and he's thrown it
Speaker 2: back through the window, through the top pane of the window,
Speaker 2: which hadn't been smashed. He could have thrown it through
Speaker 2: the bottom. Pain but stop, faint and we see the
Speaker 2: ball of death and he'd cut the wire and come
Speaker 2: hurtling across the lawn and rolled on the ground like
Speaker 2: a ten pin bowling ball. And he yelled out, read
Speaker 2: what I've got on the and f and I can't
Speaker 2: mean what do you called it? And he gave me
Speaker 2: he said why don't you know? He said, you blokes,
Speaker 2: f off. I won't say what it was, but f off.
Speaker 2: And we laughed. And then about ten or fifteen minutes later,
Speaker 2: after you calm down, you got I hopped on the
Speaker 2: paid I can't remember his name, his poplic Gary.
Speaker 1: I said, oh, I did come out. You must have
Speaker 1: been You did.
Speaker 2: Come out, yeah, I said, Gary, we've got the place
Speaker 2: around it. You're not going to go into where you wanted.
Speaker 2: You said, okay, look, give me give me five or
Speaker 2: ten minutes. And I'm looking at I was with Chris
Speaker 2: at the time, and I said, what do you want
Speaker 2: five or ten minutes for? And then somebody dawned upon us.
Speaker 2: He wanted to give his partner a special home of
Speaker 2: good goodbye, and he came out and it was fine.
Speaker 1: It's bizarre things that go on that sieges I was
Speaker 1: at the siege. You have the robot that we used
Speaker 1: to send them with the Tactical Operations Unit, and we
Speaker 1: had to carry the robot leopard crawling all the way
Speaker 1: and carrying the carrying the robot which was quite heavy.
Speaker 1: It wasn't carrying it. We get it all the way in,
Speaker 1: we get back without being shot, and we're all happy.
Speaker 1: But one of the tires fell up, so then we
Speaker 1: had the leopard crawl all the back and carry the
Speaker 1: rabot out fix its little tire and send it back in.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're serious situations. But yeah, hearing us laugh
Speaker 1: about it, You've got to find the humor in these
Speaker 1: situations because otherwise it's too tight. You're hanging on too tight. Policing.
Speaker 1: You worked, you work some of the tough errors. You
Speaker 1: worked out West and that you would have seen a
Speaker 1: lot of crime. You became a became a detective, You
Speaker 1: became involved in training of detectives, which I think is
Speaker 1: absolutely crucial, and we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that later on. But you also decided to become a
Speaker 1: bit somewhat of an academic. Run us through your qualifications
Speaker 1: so we know who we're talking to.
Speaker 2: So when I was in the police, I just had
Speaker 2: I wasn't very good at school academically at all. I
Speaker 2: mean on my late bloomer. So when I was in
Speaker 2: the police, I decided to put myself through you. And
Speaker 2: you say, when I was in the place, I got
Speaker 2: a degree in psychology, a degree in criminology. Then I
Speaker 2: went on and did my NBA Masters in Business Administration,
Speaker 2: and then I went on and did my when I
Speaker 2: was down at gulb and lecturing a university teaching and
Speaker 2: learning a degree, and then I went on and did
Speaker 2: emergency management. So when I actually that was just by luck.
Speaker 2: And so I always found interesting. I wouldn't tell to
Speaker 2: a nerd what people probably might disagree.
Speaker 1: That's I won't say what's up said about that?
Speaker 2: And so when I left. I left in two thousand
Speaker 2: and ten or twenty eleven after some bad he's pushed
Speaker 2: me off a roof at Saint Mary's. I was in.
Speaker 1: GDS negatiations about it. Don't push me, oh stuff to you,
Speaker 1: and they pushed you off a.
Speaker 2: Roof talking about a loser.
Speaker 1: People are listening, who you might get a sense of
Speaker 1: I who pushed off the roof just shut up?
Speaker 2: Ah. Anyway, that my colleague who had the blake, who
Speaker 2: I was with at the time. It was a young
Speaker 2: perbasery constable. It just happened to be there. He just
Speaker 2: left the army and he was in the SAS and
Speaker 2: he is as I'm laying on the ground with a
Speaker 2: fractured skull and fractured leg. Literally, I'll get them by,
Speaker 2: I'll get them so and next couple of seconds later,
Speaker 2: a couple of minutes later, I hear his blood curdling scream.
Speaker 2: He's obviously giving these blokes a bit of summary justice.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, well they should take offense. You can't
Speaker 1: throw Vince off the roof.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, that's too much giving concrete, I can
Speaker 2: tell you that.
Speaker 1: Well, look, despite the smile on my face, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to hear that's what ended your career. But train off
Speaker 1: a roof. We've had a lot of people had different reasons.
Speaker 1: Why did you leave the police roof? And lucky you
Speaker 1: had your say, yeah, I know they might have jumped
Speaker 1: on you after they threw off the roof. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you've found your way into academia. Academia and you're lecturing criminologists.
Speaker 1: Where are you lecturing at mcquarie Union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, McQuary Union. So when I left and I was
Speaker 2: recovering from my injuries, it was just by sheer luck
Speaker 2: that this opportunity came up, this job. So I went
Speaker 2: down and it was informal talk with the boss at
Speaker 2: the UNI, in charge of the of the department, and
Speaker 2: he said, look, if you want a job, it's there
Speaker 2: for you have no one in policing. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: give it to go. And they've been there fourteen years
Speaker 2: now and absolutely love it. It's fantastic. The kids are excellent.
Speaker 2: None of them necessarily want to be in the police,
Speaker 2: so they want to go into things like Asia or
Speaker 2: asis or Department of Defense or Attorneys General or cyber
Speaker 2: or something like that. So I talk about to the kids,
Speaker 2: and I call them kids, but they're not. They're adults
Speaker 2: about my experience. But also, you know, what is policing,
Speaker 2: And when you think about it, it is how I
Speaker 2: see the police is like they're referees in society. So
Speaker 2: you know, so police are called upon to do all
Speaker 2: manner of things, as you know, and I'm sure the
Speaker 2: listeners know. And then the police adjudicate on a situation
Speaker 2: and they bring in their own personal experience, so being
Speaker 2: in their own life experience, they listen to the views
Speaker 2: of the victims the offender and look at the situation
Speaker 2: and they make a judgment call. And sometimes a judgment
Speaker 2: call is good, sometimes it's not so good, and sometimes
Speaker 2: it's horrendously bad when I make a catastrophic mistake for
Speaker 2: no fall of their own. Sometimes, so I see the
Speaker 2: police like a referee in society of trying to keep
Speaker 2: society fairly harmonious. Not everyone as we are going to
Speaker 2: agree with what the police do. And I often say
Speaker 2: that the kids. You know, when I talk about mental
Speaker 2: health and having been a negotiator, people look at things retrospectively,
Speaker 2: and you don't have that luxury at the time of
Speaker 2: looking at things retrospectively. You make a judgment call and
Speaker 2: what you believe to be the best decision to be
Speaker 2: made in a situation. So to help them understand about
Speaker 2: the policing, I often use the word that police are
Speaker 2: like street corner psychiatrists because they deal with mental health,
Speaker 2: drug and alcohol, gambling, of course, you know, domestic violence,
Speaker 2: something I'm very passionate about, but all manner of crime.
Speaker 2: And you know, the time pressure is put on police
Speaker 2: to deal with all these particular issues. They go from
Speaker 2: one job to another job to another job. And I
Speaker 2: tell the kids it's just like if you can imagine
Speaker 2: a pinball machine, the ball has been flipped all over
Speaker 2: the place, and they've got to make these judgment calls.
Speaker 2: You know, you're going to a violent domestic and then
Speaker 2: another one comes on over the police radio and you go, oh,
Speaker 2: which one's more serious, and you pick to go to one,
Speaker 2: and you don't know if that decision is right until
Speaker 2: til afterwards. So I try to get I don't try
Speaker 2: to change the student's point of view. I try to
Speaker 2: get them to challenge it, to think about, well, what
Speaker 2: is policing in today's society actually like? And it's certainly
Speaker 2: not clear cut, as we both know.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the fact that you've got that lived
Speaker 1: experience as a police officer, so you've got the street
Speaker 1: smarts that come with play, but the fact that you've
Speaker 1: drifted into lecturing and the academic side of it. It's
Speaker 1: a good combination of skills that you can look at
Speaker 1: it objectively because it's very easy to criticize the police
Speaker 1: that they made a decision, but let's look at the
Speaker 1: circumstances of the decision. Like you just said which domestic
Speaker 1: to go to? Or why did you leave that job
Speaker 1: and go to that job? You're going to make these calls,
Speaker 1: and invariably police work is adjudicated on six months twelve
Speaker 1: months down the track in court by barristers being paid
Speaker 1: a lot of money to make the police look stupid
Speaker 1: on whatever decision, So you're virtually in a no win situation.
Speaker 1: I would often say to people that get out of
Speaker 1: the witness box and they've been cross examined and smashed
Speaker 1: in the witness box and they gave but we didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong. And you explain, well, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It does not matter. You are going to be criticized.
Speaker 1: That's the way the system is set up. In the
Speaker 1: adversarial system, You're going to be attacked. And that's the
Speaker 1: way you're interest in domestic violence and getting back to
Speaker 1: your outburst things just you became like a YouTube sensation,
Speaker 1: didn't you after it? Everywhere I looked, there's look it was.
Speaker 2: It was so just going back to it. So it
Speaker 2: was my after I finished, you know, berating them to
Speaker 2: a point, everything I said about reading those one thousand,
Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty two Corona inquires of twenty years
Speaker 2: as correct. You know, all the all the information I
Speaker 2: said was great. It was not a scripted response. It
Speaker 2: was something that was just you know, off the off
Speaker 2: the top of my head. And had I know when
Speaker 2: I was going to be asked a question, I probably
Speaker 2: would have had something better prepared. So far as berating
Speaker 2: them was concerned, but I think that you know, when
Speaker 2: it comes to domestic violence, and my response it was
Speaker 2: more I've forgotten.
Speaker 1: The question was just what prompted that, yeah, the comments
Speaker 1: that you made there, because clearly it was coming from
Speaker 1: a deep inside you. It was genuine yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that's why it got people's You know, if you
Speaker 1: sat there and gave an academic response and all that,
Speaker 1: you stripped it away and said, oh that you want
Speaker 1: to know the truth. This is yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean seventeen million views across the socials, which
Speaker 2: was just standing much to the horror of my four
Speaker 2: teenage kids.
Speaker 1: Woul embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Ah, my two daughters. I got a twenty year old
Speaker 2: daughter and a fifteen year old daughter. Of course they're
Speaker 2: taking claim that those views are theirs. And I got
Speaker 2: twin sons who are in the middle, and they really
Speaker 2: don't care less. Although, as I said recently when I
Speaker 2: gave a talk to an NGO, my twin sons, when
Speaker 2: I were asked to mow the law and like I
Speaker 2: hid yesterday, they said, oh, how dare you? How dare
Speaker 2: You're a disgrace? It back come back at me. It's
Speaker 2: treacherous kids, teenagers. But yeah, I think that had a
Speaker 2: woman said it, it wouldn't have gained traction. But because I'm
Speaker 2: an old, fat white male, I'm stereotypical a game traction.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad for the cause, and I think the
Speaker 2: big challenge we might go into this later, but I
Speaker 2: think the big challenge over the next ten years in
Speaker 2: this area is trying to get men to come into
Speaker 2: the conversation to deal with how to rectify domestic violence.
Speaker 2: And the reason I say that is having spoken now
Speaker 2: to thousands of people all year the NGO space, you know,
Speaker 2: White Ribbon and places a lot, not so much Clawed
Speaker 2: or Rainbow Lodge, but other places similar to that. You know,
Speaker 2: they've had decades and decades of blood, sweat and tears
Speaker 2: with our government support. And now because men are the problem,
Speaker 2: to ask men to come in and assist them, they're going, WHOA,
Speaker 2: this is our space, you know, and we are victims
Speaker 2: of domestic violence, so we now don't want men coming
Speaker 2: in and telling us what to do. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's the men telling them what to do. It's about
Speaker 2: the men supporting the women who are already in this
Speaker 2: particular area. And I think the next ten years is
Speaker 2: going to be really important to try and get men
Speaker 2: to assist organizations, non government organizations to try and reduce
Speaker 2: domestic violence. Because as we know it's men that inflict
Speaker 2: the violence. It's men to destroy society. Do they start
Speaker 2: wars in the Middle East? You know, they trush society
Speaker 2: with environment. So men are the problem. But now to
Speaker 2: try and get men into the conversation or decent people
Speaker 2: into the conversation, it's going to be really hard.
Speaker 1: And you've got all these women that have been working
Speaker 1: hard for a very long time without any help and
Speaker 1: building it from ground up, and then okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to get the men come in here. There's so many
Speaker 1: issues too and to address with it. And I'm looking
Speaker 1: at some of the points that flowed on from your
Speaker 1: comments on Q and A and talking about addressing drug
Speaker 1: and alcohol abuse, how that factors into domestic violence. So
Speaker 1: it's not just it's not one dimensional. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of factors that come into it that talk to me
Speaker 1: about the impact of alcohol and drugs in domestic violence.
Speaker 2: So one of my areas have studied, I like, is
Speaker 2: police shootings, and I've read the coronial reports and I've
Speaker 2: got a spreadsheet at home. I'm going to write an
Speaker 2: article one day when I get around it. I don't
Speaker 2: know when that is. But when you look at the
Speaker 2: fatal police shootings in Australia from twenty twelve to twenty ten,
Speaker 2: or twenty twelve anyway to twenty twenty two. If you
Speaker 2: look at the fatal police shootings that have occurred, ninety percent,
Speaker 2: whether it be a domestic violence or whether at be
Speaker 2: people with mental health, ninety percent of those people have
Speaker 2: underlying historical, well developed drug and alcohol addiction problems, psychiatric problems.
Speaker 2: So we talk about domestic violence. So if you looked
Speaker 2: at the figures for domestic violence, like the Coronia Report
Speaker 2: are reports I've read, if government spent more on the
Speaker 2: drug and alcohol then a lot of the problems could
Speaker 2: be could be solved because it is those fundamental drug
Speaker 2: and alcohol issues that cause domestic violence. I does drugging
Speaker 2: alcohol cause these problems. If you look at there's a
Speaker 2: thing called, believe it or not, the Misery Index, and
Speaker 2: it's a measure of the state of the nation's welfare.
Speaker 2: It looks at what's the word I'm looking for, looks
Speaker 2: at economics, it looks at an unemployment then it puts
Speaker 2: it on a graph and it's a credible graph. And
Speaker 2: if you go back about thirty years and you looked
Speaker 2: at the misery index, and you're superimposed that over the
Speaker 2: deaths and domestic violence. There is almost a one hundred
Speaker 2: percent correlation between harsh economic times and spikes in domestic
Speaker 2: violence in murders, I should.
Speaker 1: Say, OK, so domestic violence related murders, yep, yep.
Speaker 2: So based on what I've read anyway, Like, now, why
Speaker 2: has there been so many women murdered because of unemployment,
Speaker 2: because of interest rates going up, because of the cost
Speaker 2: of living, because of lack of housing. And it can't
Speaker 2: be over the last thirty years where it's spiked and
Speaker 2: we're talking like, you know, you think it's probably have
Speaker 2: earned about ten times over the last few decades. It
Speaker 2: can't be coincidental that in harsh economic times more women
Speaker 2: are murdered.
Speaker 1: It makes sense. And you just talk economics, housing issues
Speaker 1: and all that for relationships gone bad. Quite often people
Speaker 1: are stuck within the relationship because economically that they can't
Speaker 1: afford to separate. It can be as simple as that.
Speaker 1: And then you've got this ticking time bomb. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: carrying on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And not only that, you hear people say, I mean,
Speaker 2: I've spoken to about three thousand school childrens across the
Speaker 2: schools New South across Sydney and some of the kids say, well,
Speaker 2: why doesn't the women have a bit of a cunning
Speaker 2: kit as we used to say, you know, you used
Speaker 2: to put a bit of money. But the problem is
Speaker 2: they aren't in the economic control of their finances.
Speaker 1: That leads into the coersive control aspects of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they can't even vulnerable. Yeah, even if they
Speaker 2: wanted to leave, they can't because they don't have any
Speaker 2: money to leave and going. The kids don't under like
Speaker 2: the school kids I'm talking about now, I don't really
Speaker 2: understand that that you know, that's an element of it.
Speaker 2: So you know, that coercive control and the kids, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get them to understand, particularly girls, you know,
Speaker 2: what are the subtleties as we know about coercive control.
Speaker 2: And i'd say to that skilled children I talk to,
Speaker 2: you know, in very simple terms, particular to the girls,
Speaker 2: you know, if the relationship doesn't feel right, then it's
Speaker 2: probably not good.
Speaker 1: Good advice the advice. Yeah, but with that coersive control,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that's really good changes where the
Speaker 1: legislation has been implemented, because I think from policing and
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about coercive control on this podcast.
Speaker 1: But with policing, we used to turn up at the domes.
Speaker 1: Well there's no assault that's taken place. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any powers to act on what's occurred. It's obvious what
Speaker 1: was going to occur, but we didn't have the legislation
Speaker 1: COURSI control. I think the introduction of it's great. I
Speaker 1: think we're just going to make sure police are informed
Speaker 1: about it and they how to look for the signs
Speaker 1: of it, gather the evidence so the legislation can be
Speaker 1: used to it's full of strength. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also think, as you would know with any new law,
Speaker 2: it's going to take the police a while to adjust
Speaker 2: to it and to be able to prove it in court,
Speaker 2: and then on top of that then there's going to
Speaker 2: be appeals because it's new law. So I think I
Speaker 2: think the evolution of it will probably take probably five
Speaker 2: maybe ten years before it becomes fairly normative. But we're
Speaker 2: going to be, as you labor intentive to go back
Speaker 2: and to pick up all the pieces to thread them
Speaker 2: together to come up with to paint a picture. In Scotland,
Speaker 2: the law there about coercia control, which is one of
Speaker 2: the best in the world only needs three three pieces
Speaker 2: of information or three what's what I'm looking elements? Elements? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: to show that someone has been coercive, so they only
Speaker 2: need three. In New South Wales, I don't think there's
Speaker 2: any specific number, but trying to piece it all together
Speaker 2: and it's going to be you know, it is going
Speaker 2: to be time consuming. SMSs and all the pictures and
Speaker 2: the behavior of the individual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to take in. It's gathering
Speaker 1: its evidence as complex as a homicide investigation. I look
Speaker 1: at it and that's wherever the police can embrace it,
Speaker 1: understand it and have the resources to deal with it.
Speaker 1: That's going to be a big thing. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: that figures And you mentioned that based on the fact
Speaker 1: you've read one three hundred and sixty two coroners reports
Speaker 1: in U Soth Wales over the last twenty years and
Speaker 1: underfunding is a common element. First of all, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of coroner's reports.
Speaker 2: To reach and I never saw your name in one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: I deny that allegation. That's a lot of reports to
Speaker 1: read and what was the focus of that? What was
Speaker 1: you're reading those reports and what did you learn from that?
Speaker 2: The purpose I'm actually starting to read them years ago.
Speaker 2: Was to try and understand, well, actually, it's more from
Speaker 2: a police shooting point of view, you know, why did
Speaker 2: the police end up shooting an individual? So that's how
Speaker 2: that was the beginning point. It was never initially about
Speaker 2: domestic violence per se. It was more our interest or
Speaker 2: my interest in you know what, why why do police
Speaker 2: shoot someone? And you hear this phrase in academa, and
Speaker 2: I'm always correcting my colleagues at work, the police use
Speaker 2: of fatal force. Police don't choose to use fatal force.
Speaker 2: The police shoot someone invariably to stop them doing something.
Speaker 2: If they die a result of it, then that's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: But this term that they used in academia, you know,
Speaker 2: police use of fatal force is a bit of this
Speaker 2: moment mis noma. Yeah, that's right. Academic, you wouldn't think so.
Speaker 2: So it was about looking at the police shootings, but
Speaker 2: it developed into about trying to get an understanding of
Speaker 2: the dynamics of domestic violence and mental health. Because when
Speaker 2: I talk to the students again and even at school
Speaker 2: about police shootings and mental health, I'm getting off the
Speaker 2: point slightly, but I'm trying to fill in time.
Speaker 1: For you events, I can guarantee you who we're going
Speaker 1: to fill the time up I've just got. We're on
Speaker 1: the ground floor. I can't frae you off.
Speaker 2: But when we talk about police shootings and mental health,
Speaker 2: I say to the kids in class, you know, they say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: why didn't the police do this or why didn't the
Speaker 2: police do that? After the event, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, when you're arrived at the scene, you
Speaker 2: don't know anything about the person. You don't even know
Speaker 2: their name. Sometimes as a negotiating didn't even know that. Well,
Speaker 2: you might have known the name, but that was about it.
Speaker 2: You didn't know if they had one or two mental
Speaker 2: health issues, whether or diagnosed or undiagnosed. You didn't know
Speaker 2: what medication they were on. You didn't know if they'd
Speaker 2: taken their medication the day before. You didn't know if
Speaker 2: they took heart their medication. You didn't know if they
Speaker 2: doubled up because they'd missed it the day before. You
Speaker 2: didn't know if the medication they had taken was out
Speaker 2: of date. Then if they had alcohol, what was the
Speaker 2: impact chemically on the brain of you know, spirits or
Speaker 2: beer or wine. And then in if they smoke the
Speaker 2: Devil's let us marijuana. What's the impact upon that? And
Speaker 2: then you, I say to the kids, and now you
Speaker 2: expect me to know, You expect the police to know
Speaker 2: within thirty seconds if someone is rational or not. When
Speaker 2: you look at the world HAATH organizations for mental health,
Speaker 2: it's something like who says, it's something like one in
Speaker 2: every three purple in the Western world suffer some type
Speaker 2: of mental health issues. So that means the three of
Speaker 2: us here, you're the one Gary.
Speaker 1: I'm looking around not necessarily let people. Let the listeners
Speaker 1: form their own opinion. Who's got the mental health in
Speaker 1: I haven't been. I was just thrown under a bus.
Speaker 2: And that's going to dog you for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life, poor bar.
Speaker 1: Continue.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so I can't even remember the question.
Speaker 1: Now you just the reports and what you were finding
Speaker 1: mental health And I'll chime in there with In my
Speaker 1: role as homicide inspector, I oversaw a lot of critical
Speaker 1: incident investigations where police have someone in cussy has been
Speaker 1: killed by police. So a lot of them and I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking anik daily, I'd say eighty percent of them
Speaker 1: are involving mental health issues. There was some recommendations that
Speaker 1: flowed on from a very sad case that I oversaw
Speaker 1: was the shooting of Courtney Topic. Oh yeah, so I was.
Speaker 1: I was an officer in charge of the critical investigation there.
Speaker 1: That was the poor girl coming out with a mental
Speaker 1: health issue, carrying a knife but also a smoothie from
Speaker 1: Hungry Jacks or whatever, walking on the grass verge and
Speaker 1: shot and killed. And it still haunts me to this
Speaker 1: day what happened to there. And I know her parents well.
Speaker 1: I stay in touch with their parents and the things
Speaker 1: that they struggle with. From that. On the back of
Speaker 1: the coronial inquiry, there was a lot of recommendations about
Speaker 1: better training with police mental health, so teaching police how
Speaker 1: to deal with someone that's suffering mental health de escalating
Speaker 1: instead of escalating, because if we go strictly by the
Speaker 1: rule book, you're dealing with someone that's not thinking rationally
Speaker 1: and they're not going to always respond to your commands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just on that case, I remember and correct
Speaker 2: me if I'm wrong. I think that when I read it,
Speaker 2: the coroner said that it was highly unlikely whatever the
Speaker 2: police was saying to us, she did not couldn't comprehend
Speaker 2: exactly exactly so again when I say to the kids,
Speaker 2: just because the police are talking to as you know,
Speaker 2: talking to them, doesn't necessarily they actually can comprehend and
Speaker 2: hear what the police are saying. And that was a tragic,
Speaker 2: absolutely tragic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was horrendous, And like I hope and as
Speaker 1: I said, a lot of recommendations came from it. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to Courtney's parents recently, and I don't think all
Speaker 1: the recommendations have been implemented, but it's certainly something that
Speaker 1: we need to upskill the police on. And like it's
Speaker 1: easy to blame the police because they're the ones that
Speaker 1: get blamed, but we need the proper funding for this
Speaker 1: type of training as well, don't we. And to have
Speaker 1: someone with mental health capabilities, Like if you get called
Speaker 1: to a situation like that, have someone on call with
Speaker 1: mental health training that can come and assess the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they've got I think the PACER program I
Speaker 2: think might've been in Victoria. I can't remember. Is it
Speaker 2: in Victoria? Do you know? I'm not sure any but
Speaker 2: one thing that I've read about it and even done
Speaker 2: a bit of academic research in it, and something that
Speaker 2: I struggle with with that particular model is that the
Speaker 2: police and MBOs. A nurse gets called to the mental
Speaker 2: health episode, but in any event, the police have to
Speaker 2: be the first ones or variably go in first, because
Speaker 2: they can't relinquish their responsibility to not protect the nurse
Speaker 2: or the ambo or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's a difficult situation, isn't it so?
Speaker 2: And then again I could be wrong, but having read
Speaker 2: a couple of cases, there has been some reluctance by
Speaker 2: say the ambos outderstandably say, well, the nurses or the
Speaker 2: mental health worker to actually go in to the premises
Speaker 2: because their life could be put in jeopardy. So the
Speaker 2: situation really in some respects unless that person is really compliant,
Speaker 2: then that model doesn't necessarily work in every situation because
Speaker 2: the police can't put someone else's life in danger.
Speaker 1: It always falls back on the police. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a difficult situation. Looking at domestic violence, and forty
Speaker 1: three percent of cases involve current or historic domestic violence
Speaker 1: or the when we're talking about women killed by an
Speaker 1: intimate male partner, so forty three percent of cases involve
Speaker 1: a current or historic domestic violence or so breaking that
Speaker 1: down then we won't talk academic, will talk just a
Speaker 1: common type talk. Basically, what we're saying here is that
Speaker 1: forty three percent, So almost half of the murders domestic murders.
Speaker 1: There's a history of domestic violence, a history or a current.
Speaker 1: So where are we failing there? It's almost like red flag,
Speaker 1: red flag yep.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's a good, good point, and I thought
Speaker 2: i'd say that for the viewer's sake. That's a great point. Gary.
Speaker 1: Thanks means you're still helping me. You let me think
Speaker 1: I was lecturing down on the detective course for all
Speaker 1: those years.
Speaker 2: So that that forty three percent. So when students ask me,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about school kids now that I talk to,
Speaker 2: they say, why doesn't she leave? And as a negotiator,
Speaker 2: you not learn it because it has to be someone
Speaker 2: innate to you to be negotiator. But everyone has different
Speaker 2: levels of rock bottom emotionally before they can make a
Speaker 2: decision to leave. So Vince Hurley is in a relationship
Speaker 2: with Gary. Vince Hurley decides to leave the relationship, Emily,
Speaker 2: can you just remove the knife from the studio? Vince
Speaker 2: Hurley decides to leave. But when he makes that decision
Speaker 2: to leave, in actual fact, he might not leave for
Speaker 2: six weeks, then when he decides to leave, he leaves,
Speaker 2: and then the cord the three or four days afterwards.
Speaker 2: This is the most important thing, But then they have
Speaker 2: to readjust to that life outside of a relationship. So
Speaker 2: when people say where are we going wrong? Sometimes I
Speaker 2: think it's really hard to pinpoint a specific thing because
Speaker 2: everyone's going to be different in the way in which
Speaker 2: they make a decision to leave a relationship. I've got
Speaker 2: a friend who highly intelligent, well paid job, has been
Speaker 2: in a I wouldn't say a physically violent relationship but
Speaker 2: certainly a coercive relationship for ten years and she knows it.
Speaker 2: And all I can do as a friend of Nona
Speaker 2: now for twenty years is just be there to support her.
Speaker 2: But she has to make that decision to leave now.
Speaker 2: She knows that getting back to the point of that
Speaker 2: forty three or nearly half, she knows that at some
Speaker 2: stage it could escalate, but she either she doesn't want
Speaker 2: to leave or she can't bring herself to leave. So
Speaker 2: I think there'll always be a percentage of people, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: who for whatever reason, whether it's for the sake of
Speaker 2: the kids or because they don't have any support outside,
Speaker 2: or they don't have the emotional strength to do it.
Speaker 2: There will always be subject to this tragic circumstances of
Speaker 2: being murdered. So that forty three percent I can understand now,
Speaker 2: having read the coronial reports and look at this academically,
Speaker 2: that some people just will never leave a relationship sometimes
Speaker 2: also because they are so dependent on the individual, because
Speaker 2: of the coerce you control. They have no choice, you know,
Speaker 2: they where do they go? Particularly people from Middle Eastern
Speaker 2: cultures or East Southeast support me. No, they don't, they don't,
Speaker 2: and some of them see it as a bit normative
Speaker 2: that the male is the dominant figure in the relationship.
Speaker 2: Mind blowing, just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: So at that point, if we know that domestic violence
Speaker 1: is a precursor to looking at the horror amount of
Speaker 1: women that are killed by their partners, have we got
Speaker 1: to take a stronger action of the court's got to
Speaker 1: recognize the significance of the offense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think because when we were in we had
Speaker 2: prior arrest policy as just mentioned on Q and A,
Speaker 2: and we can't arrest our way out of it. It's
Speaker 2: long gone. The horse has bolted, and I think that
Speaker 2: sometimes magistrates' hands abound. You've got limited options, not like
Speaker 2: the states where you see these really sometimes fantastic penalties
Speaker 2: or results where they may can offending say go and
Speaker 2: work in McDonald's if it's yeah, something like.
Speaker 1: That, a little bit more creative, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So what was the question?
Speaker 1: I'll go up a team academics. Have we got it?
Speaker 1: Have we got to focus more on the offense which
Speaker 1: is a precursor the domestic violence because we know it's
Speaker 1: a red flag, it's an indicator that this could escalate.
Speaker 1: What have we got to do from a court's point
Speaker 1: of view to identify the Okay, Vince has been bought
Speaker 1: before the courts now three times for domestic violence. This
Speaker 1: is not going to end well, So how do we
Speaker 1: deal with it at that level?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've got electronic brace ankle bracelets which will
Speaker 2: come to I'm sure I think that I going back
Speaker 2: to Claude robertson rain By Lodge, big fan of that
Speaker 2: I would like to see. And this is just my
Speaker 2: point of view. Currently we take the women, The women
Speaker 2: have to leave the relationship and go to a refuge.
Speaker 2: I don't know why men who have got a track
Speaker 2: record of it two or three, but say just use
Speaker 2: three as a marker why the men can't be removed
Speaker 2: from that house and sent to play similar to Rainbow Lodge,
Speaker 2: where the men are removed, not the family, so the
Speaker 2: kids don't have to change school. As we've heard from
Speaker 2: Claude in the past, that they can still go and work,
Speaker 2: earn a living and hopefully give money to the family.
Speaker 2: So removing the men and putting them through a program
Speaker 2: pay for six months, that has to be better than
Speaker 2: what we've got at the moment where the women are
Speaker 2: primarily removed. The only problem with that I see is
Speaker 2: that putting aside the current housing crisis is that some
Speaker 2: women organizations would say, well, women refuges are more important.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, maybe over the over the
Speaker 2: next decade, houses are dedicated to men to try and
Speaker 2: address their anger management. I've also spoken to a number
Speaker 2: of politicians. Everyone goes to Huff and Puff classes when
Speaker 2: their wives are it's pregnant. I don't know why men
Speaker 2: can't then and there or similar program be set up
Speaker 2: at a community center of an evening for men who
Speaker 2: have been identified as having three domestic violence. The court
Speaker 2: goes right, You're off to anger management class similar to
Speaker 2: Huff and puff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Not at the same time, obviously you need to go
Speaker 2: and address this. And if you breach this, then X,
Speaker 2: Y and Z what happened to you? Well?
Speaker 1: See, I think that's an important point because when yeah,
Speaker 1: you speak so passionately about defending women's rights and that,
Speaker 1: and there's no argument in this room, and I don't
Speaker 1: think any fair minded person would see it any other way.
Speaker 1: The statistics speak for themselves what happens to women, and
Speaker 1: men are the perpetrators. But the fixer problem. We can't
Speaker 1: arrest our way out of it because we try that
Speaker 1: and just it doesn't work. So I think this is interesting,
Speaker 1: and this is where you're looking at it, not just
Speaker 1: from the hard line policing point of view, but how
Speaker 1: do we fix a problem. We've got to fix the men.
Speaker 1: How do you fix the men? And we've got to
Speaker 1: get in their heads that it's not acceptable. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: make them own it, because if they don't own it.
Speaker 1: I did in that Breaking Badness series spent some time
Speaker 1: in the maximum security prison. I was talking to inmates
Speaker 1: in there about people in for domestic violence. And someone
Speaker 1: may made a point and it's just from the inmates point,
Speaker 1: but I think it's relevant. Because they're in prison, saying
Speaker 1: if you put blokes in here for domestic violence situations,
Speaker 1: because that just came up in conversation. You've got blokes
Speaker 1: going in the prison. They're probably sharing a cell with
Speaker 1: someone else who's in a prison, and they're probably both
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking that bitch causes blah blah, and they're
Speaker 1: whipping themselves up into a frenzy. They've served their time,
Speaker 1: they get released. They haven't come out better people. They've
Speaker 1: just come out angry. So we need to address it
Speaker 1: in that area as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, they what's them? They cement,
Speaker 2: you know, they build this anger within them.
Speaker 1: And they because they won't accept their own responsibilities for
Speaker 1: the dickead zeb and they're blaming their partner for this
Speaker 1: is why I'm in here. They're just coming out probably
Speaker 1: more angrier. So we do need to work on that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think when I talk to the school kids and
Speaker 2: even the students in class, I also never use about
Speaker 2: domestic violence. And I would say eighty percent of it.
Speaker 2: And I'm talking at prime are not primary school, high
Speaker 2: school from year ten to twelve, So we're looking at
Speaker 2: what fifteen, sixteen to eighteen and then the UNI students,
Speaker 2: most of them frame domestic violence. They focus on the
Speaker 2: word domestic. They don't see it just straight out violence.
Speaker 1: So the language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so language is important, I think, and this is
Speaker 2: just again vent early talking that almost the word domestic
Speaker 2: needs to be removed from domestic violence because for the
Speaker 2: young kids, and this is the next generation, we need
Speaker 2: them to focus on the violence against the woman. It's
Speaker 2: not a domestic setting. They don't see a domestic argument
Speaker 2: in a shopping center because it's not within a home.
Speaker 2: They don't see that the footy. They don't see it
Speaker 2: domestic at a footy. Sorry, And they don't see it
Speaker 2: as just walking down the street when they're arguing. They
Speaker 2: only see domestic violence within the setting of the home.
Speaker 2: So we want to get through to the young people
Speaker 2: about violence against women. It's just straight out violent against women.
Speaker 1: I do get what you're saying there, because the domestic
Speaker 1: you stand back and you think, oh, well, there's always
Speaker 1: two sides of the situation. So you've softened it right
Speaker 1: right from the start. Yeah, violence against women, because no
Speaker 1: one wants to where that Like people go, oh, it
Speaker 1: was a domestic situation, that was just a lover's tiff,
Speaker 1: that type of thing. They can hide behind that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but violence against women not this similar to the one
Speaker 1: punch turned in the commentary became the coward's punch.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And the difference difference that makes. But it is about
Speaker 1: changing the mindset, is yeah, because it's just gone on
Speaker 1: too long and we need to address it. Do you
Speaker 1: think the government's funding all these things we talk about
Speaker 1: is part of it? We just haven't got enough money, yeah,
Speaker 1: or the government claim we haven't got enough money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know. Earlier I was talking about the misery
Speaker 2: index and then the spike in domestic violence homicides over
Speaker 2: the last thirty years. If you then go and look
Speaker 2: at the state and federal government and I'm talking about
Speaker 2: New South Wales at the moment. State, if you look
Speaker 2: at their funding, their funding always it comes after a spike, okay,
Speaker 2: is never proactive. So when Anthony Albanizi earlier this year
Speaker 2: gave nine hundred and it might have been twenty five
Speaker 2: million dollars for domestic violence, now, first of all, that's
Speaker 2: commonwealth things, so the state's a bit. The state can
Speaker 2: only take some of it and implement it at a
Speaker 2: state level. But when I read his press release and
Speaker 2: then when I heard him talking on TV that money
Speaker 2: he talks about generational change, and then the press release
Speaker 2: and in his transcript of the interview, I think I
Speaker 2: read about thirteen times the word generational change. But the
Speaker 2: funding was only for five years. Bloody politicians, how can
Speaker 2: it be? The last time I checked the McCorry dictionary,
Speaker 2: a generation wasn't six years, it was twenty years.
Speaker 1: Or they're just short little.
Speaker 2: So they just irritate and it's wrong, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: well even I mean, I'm not just saying that the
Speaker 2: nine hundred million or whatever it is is not good.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. But and do you know why I think
Speaker 2: this has been cynical? Why it's only six years or
Speaker 2: five years?
Speaker 1: Election term, yep.
Speaker 2: Election cycle. So I think he'll anticipate winning the next
Speaker 2: election and the funding runs out just before the election
Speaker 2: after that, so if he doesn't get re elected, the
Speaker 2: money won't be spent, or if he thinks he's got
Speaker 2: a good chance of being re elected, he'll announce more funding.
Speaker 1: It's a cynical view, but when you look at politics, yeah,
Speaker 1: they put themselves out there so were allowed to ask
Speaker 1: the question.
Speaker 2: I mean looks. Take Bridget McKenzie on Q and A.
Speaker 2: She had that colored spread shed pork barreling of the
Speaker 2: electorate years a couple of years ago. They funded that
Speaker 2: shooting range or gallery down it. They might have been
Speaker 2: waggle wogger. So they're happy to spend money on things
Speaker 2: for them, their own personal interests or vested interest to
Speaker 2: win an election. But when it comes to funding domestic
Speaker 2: violence or mental health, or drugs and alcohol, they do
Speaker 2: not They do not have enough funding. If you look
Speaker 2: at a graph, and even by not coincidence out of curiosity,
Speaker 2: I used AI also for this.
Speaker 1: I asked it. Yeah, it's amazing, scary.
Speaker 2: The students you said all the time, they'd go, god,
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well we've got to embrace like I really and
Speaker 1: I'm coming crashing into the modern technology, but you've got
Speaker 1: to embrace it. Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, it's it's fantastic, but it's it's a resource.
Speaker 1: It's a resource that is should use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if we had another hour, I talk about that,
Speaker 2: by the way, because I talk about it, well, we.
Speaker 1: Do have another hour. In part if I don't throw
Speaker 1: you off the roof beforehand. Damn it, we're on the
Speaker 1: ground floor. But sorry, we're off track because I do
Speaker 1: want to talk about AI and investigations because I think
Speaker 1: it's going to change change the landscape in a big way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the funding and it always worries me. I'm
Speaker 1: talking state elections here where if it's there a law
Speaker 1: and order issue, they go, Okay, we're going to increase
Speaker 1: the police. You and I know that it's not about
Speaker 1: the quantity of police. It's about the quality of p
Speaker 1: and the training they get. And you see spikes in
Speaker 1: the police increase. But when you stay in the police
Speaker 1: long enough, you know when that intake of people that
Speaker 1: were initially rejected from the police have now been accepted. Yes,
Speaker 1: how problematic that can become in an organization working with
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 2: And even when you get even if there was sufficient police,
Speaker 2: and there's not at the moment. But if you took
Speaker 2: when I joined, and probably you, for the first.
Speaker 1: Two years, I was hopeless, you're blind.
Speaker 2: So really, the productivity that Vince Hurley produced in the
Speaker 2: first two maybe even three years as a basally comfortable
Speaker 2: amount drew it was nothing. So I didn't have any
Speaker 2: occupational maturity. So even if I went in now, for example, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd have life experience, but I'd still be wouldn't be
Speaker 2: that productive because I'm in a new area of work
Speaker 2: I wasn't familiar with. So productivity for the police is
Speaker 2: virtually is not a great in the first couple of years.
Speaker 2: So even if you do have the numbers, and they
Speaker 2: certainly don't have the numbers at the moment, no.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that because I think it's really
Speaker 1: at the at the critical point. At the risk of
Speaker 1: being controversial, I don't know if just increasing everyone's pay
Speaker 1: by thirty is the right move, But we'll we'll talk
Speaker 1: talk about that. That that were rejoining, I'd love to
Speaker 1: see you back down in the academy marching. You would
Speaker 1: have got into trouble. Okay, well, we'll be back for
Speaker 1: part two shortly, if I don't pray Vince off the
Speaker 1: ground floor. But I look in all jokes aside, and
Speaker 1: we're making light of situations. But what we're talking here
Speaker 1: is about stuff that we're both passionate about. And you've
Speaker 1: got that wealth of knowledge. You've got your little smarty
Speaker 1: academic stuff, but you've got the streets smarts as well,
Speaker 1: and combining it so there's so many more things I
Speaker 1: want to speak to you about when we come back
Speaker 1: for part two.
Speaker 2: Can't wait. Thanks mate, Cheers,