Protecting police and emergency services

The LNP’s stance
The LNP believes that any offender who seriously assaults a police officer or an emergency services worker should serve a mandatory minimum jail sentence of three months imprisonment.

Reasons for this stance
As such the Criminal Code should be amended to make it clear that serious assaults against police and ambulance officers, fire and rescue officers and rural fire officers are not tolerated. A serious assault includes when the officer or emergency services worker received actual bodily harm, or is bitten, spat on or has bodily fluids thrown at them.

Serious assaults expose police officers and emergency service workers to serious infection or harm. The LNP has long held the view that Queensland police officers and emergency service workers should be better protected by the law.

In 2007 there were 429 offenders convicted of serious assaults against police officers.  Between December 2008 and June 2009 police officers made 155 WorkCover claims for assaults against them — in almost half of those cases the officer was exposed to blood or bodily fluid. There were 38 assaults on ambulance officers recorded in 2007/08, which increased to 107 assaults in 2008/09 and there was a further 21 assaults reported in the first six weeks of 2009/10.

The LNP’s commitment is based upon elements of legislation introduced and enacted into the West Australian Parliament by the Barnet lead Coalition Government.

Criminal Code (Serious Assaults on Police and Other Particular Persons) Amendment Bill 2010