Queensland's Police Commissioner has appointed a workplace culture expert to overhaul the beleaguered Queensland Police Service (QPS).
Commissioner Katarina Carroll confirmed Julie McKay — who is the Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Officer at PriceWaterhouseCoopers — officially started work with QPS a week ago.
"She will look at the reforms that we've already started and the reforms that happen into the future and assist the organisation in that leadership, that cultural reform in the organisation," Commissioner Carroll said.
This week, secret recordings from inside the Brisbane City watch house revealed staff using racist slurs and sexist language.
It comes after a lengthy Commission of Inquiry into QPS responses to domestic and family violence, which heard evidence of racist and sexist behaviour amongst officers, including senior officials.
The Commission handed its report to the government last week and it is due to be released on Monday.
But Commissioner Carroll said Ms McKay's appointment was the result of an internal review conducted earlier this year and they'd had conversations "over a number of months now".
Commissioner Carroll said Ms McKay has years of leadership and cultural reform experience.
"She worked with the United Nations in that area, and also worked with defence in that area," Commissioner Carroll said.
Commissioner Carroll added she had previously worked with Ms McKay during a review of the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services.
"That background, those learnings are incredibly important to know — that the strategies and the initiatives that you're implementing, be it in education be IT systems, be it procedural new ways of doing business — to see whether that works, whether it needs tweaking and what more needs to be done into the future," Commissioner Carroll said.
Several people eyed for sacking
Commissioner Carroll said she was seeking legal advice about sacking particular QPS officers.
"We are looking at the moment at several people that I'm going to ask my legal team and get legal advice to take some of those officers to the next step, to see whether they're suitable to be an officer in the organisation," she said.
"The difficulty with that is they're all at each different parts of their process and some of them being done with other processes," Commissioner Carroll said.
She said she'd had a discussion with Police Minister Mark Ryan about whether the senior leadership team needed greater powers to fire officers over instances of sexism, racism and misogyny.
Commissioner Carroll said QPS had "overhauled" its disciplinary process for staff accused of misogyny, sexism or racism by centralising it through the Ethical Standards Command.
"To add to that very shortly, we will also have a psychologist start in that unit as well to give comfort for witnesses and complainants to come forward, and for that psychologist to refer those people to further services if need be," she said.
Mr Ryan reinforced his support for Commissioner Carroll.
"We've just heard the Commissioner talk about her reform record — the reforms she's done, and the reforms she's committed to," he said.
"I think that is a pretty good example of the qualities of Katarina Carroll, and why, not only the government has confidence in her, but why all Queenslanders should have confidence in her."
