My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police, and the action I seek is for the minister to immediately restore the operating hours of police stations across my electorate of Lowan.
Last week I attended the Horsham police station just after 10 am. I did not realise it at the time, but we have got reduced operating hours at Horsham police station, and there were any number of people waiting to be served in the front counter area of Horsham police station.
The police at Horsham are doing an absolutely outstanding job. They do an incredible amount of work in the community. They are the front-facing service for so many aspects of our community and deal with some of the more difficult aspects within our community. I certainly thank Horsham police for their recent support following an incident that I was the victim of.
We also know that at Horsham the police are working in even harder conditions, because while it is a two-storey building, the upper floor is currently closed due to black mould. This is very, very difficult, because in the upstairs area there are critical officers, including the sexual offences and child abuse investigation team. They have got reduced capacity at the moment.
So we have not just got a floor of Horsham police station closed, we have got reduced hours, which is putting enormous pressure on our police officers to be able to serve the community. We have seen this rollback of operating hours of police stations across the entire electorate. Stawell police station also has heavily reduced hours.
What this means for our community is that it sends a message that our police are not available, and when people need to go in to make a statement, it is at very, very limited times of the day and everybody wants to make a statement at exactly the same time. I ran into Paul Christopher, who is a fabulous local person involved in the local livestock exchange at Horsham, who was making a statement and retrieving some items that had been stolen from the livestock exchange. These are the interactions that are dealt with through the work of police.
It is so important for our community to be able to engage with local police. It does not matter whether it is break-ins, car theft, farm crime, violent offending, antisocial behaviour, domestic violence or any other matter in our community, we need a clear signal that we send to our community and to criminals in the local area that our police will be there when they are needed.
I urge the Minister for Police to immediately ensure there are an appropriate number of police officers in communities right across Victoria but particularly in the outer reaches of our state. We do matter in regional Victoria and in rural Victoria, and I urge the Minister for Police to ensure our stations are appropriately staffed to support other police officers and our community.