ORG units

Brisbane will be Australia's 'terror hub'
By Michael Wray
January 21, 2008 01:00am

BRISBANE will be Australia's counter terrorism policing hub with squads of elite federal police to be based in the city for emergencies at home and in the Pacific region.

But with Queensland police numbers already stretched, there are concerns experienced local officers will move to the Australian Federal Police and leave a skills vacuum in specialist services.
The AFP confirmed yesterday that a crack Operational Response Group unit had been set up in Brisbane but refused to say how many officers it had or what they did.

But The Courier-Mail understands the 150 ORG officers will be split into three units of 50, with two units in Brisbane and one in Canberra.

It is believed a combination of Brisbane's proximity to the Pacific region, its international airport and the Enoggera army base made it an attractive host for the ORG units.

But the new positions have the potential to affect the Queensland Police Service, which has already indicated to the AFP it will not be able to continue its deployments to Timor and the Solomon Islands after June.

A total of 20 officers are in Timor and the Solomons as part of six-month secondments but the drain on resources has taken its toll. Queensland is trying to fill its quota of 118 police for the Brisbane, Coolangatta and Cairns airports by the middle of the year.

Eleven officers are in the Northern Territory as part of the former Howard government's intervention in indigenous communities. The officers who switch to the ORG could earn as much as $40,000 more in base salary and tens of thousands more should they be sent overseas.

Queensland Police Union general secretary Phil Hocken said the drain of senior police to the AFP was a major problem.

"Experienced cops are always hard to replace but there's not much we can really do because it's up to the individual," Mr Hocken said. The losses and competition for officers has heaped more pressure on the State Government which has promised to boost frontline officer numbers.

The AFP has been rebuilding its depleted International Deployment Group since mid-2006 in response to increasing regional demands. Police Federation of Australia chief executive Mark Burgess said all Australian jurisdictions faced shortages with 13,200 officers needed in the next three years.

AFP officers are serving on overseas deployments in Cyprus, the Solomon Islands, Sudan, Timor-Leste, Nauru, Tonga, Vanuatu, Cambodia and Afghanistan, according to the AFP website.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23081973-2,00.html