Adam Hort says Labor’s budget boost to hire new staff for GPS tracking an admission the scheme failed

The Opposition has seized on a $23 million funding boost for GPS tracking of family violence offenders as proof the scheme was previously under-resourced. The State Government insists the cash injection — to hire an extra 38 staff — is nothing unusual. But Shadow Police Minister Adam Hort called it an admission of failure. “We had leaked letters, we had all sorts of information coming out from a system that was stretched, saying that this monitoring was not working and time and again Roger Cook said that the system was working,” he said. “Now what we’ve seen is an admission by this Government in the Budget. They can spin it all they like, the Budget doesn’t lie. He called it a “final win” for the community, but said the Government should have “come clean” in April when it was revealed magistrates in Bunbury and Albany were told GPS monitors could not be used in regional WA — where 41 of 107 repeat offenders were being monitored A leaked letter from the Justice Department to WA Police warned that community corrections would stop recommending electronic monitoring for regional offenders, due to an “unacceptable risk” when equipment failed. At the time, Premier Roger Cook blamed “technical limitations” and “black spots” and denied there was any resourcing shortfall. On Thursday, Minister for Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Jessica Stojkovski said the staffing boost was part of normal Budget processes. “Whenever we bring in new programs, as they develop we look at how we adapt and fund them to meet the need that we’re seeing,” she said. “The two year trial was only limited to certain areas and it didn’t include the whole State. “So rolling the program out across the State, obviously, we were going to have some learnings, even as we started to roll it out. It’s not even a 12 month old program.” Laws mandating the installation of GPS monitors on repeat domestic violence offenders came into effect last December. Ms Stojkovski denied victims of domestic violence were left unprotected, if GPS monitors didn’t work. “Western Australians have some of the strongest legislation in the country to protect victim survivors of domestic violence,” she said. “This has been part of what we’re doing, it is not the whole of what we’re doing. “Electronic monitoring was a bail condition, it was only ever required on a perpetrator if they had met other bail conditions so they were being allowed out on bail and were deemed to not be a risk to the community of to their victim survivor.”