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Speaker 1: Thousands fewer family harm cases are being investigated by police.

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Speaker 1: In March, police announced that officers would no longer have

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Speaker 1: to attend all family callouts. Well, this decision has had

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Speaker 1: an immediate impact, thousands fewer. In fact, official data shows

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Speaker 1: nearly three thousand fewer cases were investigated last month compared

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Speaker 1: to December last year. So I'm joined now by Women's

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Speaker 1: Refuge CEO dtr Ang Jury. Hello, dr Ang, it's.

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Speaker 2: Ange actually Andrew and Tura and thanks for having me on.

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Speaker 1: I thank you. Was there a sign eamist? That doesn't matter? Hey?

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Speaker 2: Is it? Sah?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, there we go. Is this happening directly as

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Speaker 1: a result of that mandatory attendance policy being removed?

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm not entirely sure where the information has come

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Speaker 2: from and how the article in the Herald was put together.

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Speaker 2: One thing I am a little bit worried about is

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Speaker 2: the numbers that are being mentioned. There are comparing apples

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Speaker 2: and oranges. You know, you can't compare figures for June

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Speaker 2: it with figures for December. November is always a really

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Speaker 2: really high volume month.

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Speaker 1: But the difference is three thousand, and that's still big

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Speaker 1: and and what is the point of that because what

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Speaker 1: we're seeing is less police turning up to family harm

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Speaker 1: incidents and that's bad for the families.

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Speaker 2: The police haven't actually started implementing this policy yet, apart

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Speaker 2: from in two relatively small roof of concept sites. They

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Speaker 2: are still building the new system. Either that or I'm

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Speaker 2: being directly misinformed.

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Speaker 1: Have they to be involved? The call has gone out

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Speaker 1: in March, officers will no longer have to attend all

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Speaker 1: family harm callouts. I would have thought the next process

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Speaker 1: was then to talk to interested players to come up

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Speaker 1: with a system that would then cope with that, to

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Speaker 1: make sure that agencies were involved, and I would have

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Speaker 1: thought that your agency, Women's Refuge would be involved in

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Speaker 1: that consultation process. So my question for you is have

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Speaker 1: you been consulted on this?

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Speaker 2: Yes, I've been talking to the Commissioner about this policy

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Speaker 2: and we've had some robust discussions about it. I mean,

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Speaker 2: obviously I've got concerns, and it would be fair to

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Speaker 2: say probably that police does as well. But the point

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Speaker 2: remains that the volume of work that they were being

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Speaker 2: expected to attend under the mandatory policy, which by the way,

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Speaker 2: hasn't actually been removed. They've signaled that it's going to

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Speaker 2: be once the new triaging system is in place, So

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Speaker 2: I have sympathy for them. We can't have decent, robust

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Speaker 2: investigations if police have to roll up to an incident

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Speaker 2: every fifteen minutes.

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Speaker 1: And this is true, and this is why the change

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Speaker 1: was there mooted. The question is how much impact will

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Speaker 1: they have now or even more so in the future.

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Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, they are going to go for

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Speaker 1: a triage system whereby a call center operator then you know,

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Speaker 1: here's a call from somebody in the middle of a

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Speaker 1: family harm incident and then makes a call as to

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Speaker 1: whether that's worthy of having a police person co along.

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Speaker 1: Now is that a good system because that's putting a

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Speaker 1: lot of pressure on call centers.

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Speaker 2: It certainly is. And we haven't seen the risk framework,

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Speaker 2: the risk assessment framework that's been going to be used.

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Speaker 2: I mean, obviously there are really niggly worries about it,

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Speaker 2: and I think police signaled that themselves and their advice

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Speaker 2: to the to the minister.

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Speaker 1: Well, and we'll keep we'll keep our eye on it

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Speaker 1: because the policy is in process, and we'll keep an

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Speaker 1: eye and see whether it's going to work or not.

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Speaker 1: And I thank you so much. That's doctor and Jury,

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Speaker 1: Women's refuge CEO and This is News Talks and for

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