Earlier this month the Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, stood in front of the state’s largest-ever cohort of police recruits and said strategies to attract new officers were “clearly working”.
“We are committed to getting the right people,” Carroll said.
But data obtained by Guardian Australia has prompted concern that the makeup of the major recruit cohort represents a clear failure by the Queensland police service (QPS) to address cultural and diversity issues raised by last year’s landmark inquiry.
Women make up less than a quarter of the new officers, while First Nations people, and those from diverse backgrounds, continue to be significantly underrepresented when compared to the general population.
The commission of inquiry, which reported its findings 12 months ago, found that a “failure of leadership” had allowed sexism, misogyny and racism to take root within the QPS.
One of its 78 recommendations – due for completion the same day as Carroll announced the success of the major recruitment drive – was that the police service review its recruitment strategy to ensure that it “attracts applicants from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences … [and] from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds”.
Of the 586 recruits at the police academy, 144 (24.6%) are women, according to information supplied by the QPS. Only 14 (2.4%) come from non-English speaking backgrounds. Thirteen (2.2%) identify as First Nations people.
The proportion of recruits from each group is less than half that group’s proportion of the wider Queensland population and, in the case of women, substantially below the level in the existing QPS workforce.
Kerry Carrington, an associate professor from the University of the Sunshine Coast whose research has focused on women-led policing, said the intake numbers were worrying and that recruitment was “critical” to enacting the sort of cultural reform demanded by the inquiry.
“You want the best fit for the job and that means a diverse police force that represents a wider range of people,” Carrington said.
“It’s fairly important that the police force reflects [community] diversity.”
Richard Monaei, a former sergeant and the first identified Indigenous person to be selected for the QPS elite tactical unit, said he believed Indigenous people did not feel culturally safe to join the organisation.
“‘Inclusion and diversity’ are just words and fallacies,” said Monaei, who resigned last year, saying his attempts to address racism “have broken me”.
He accused QPS claims to value diversity of being “performative”.
In September, Carroll stood alongside the state human rights commissioner, Scott McDougall, to announce a review of diversity and inclusion in the service.
In response to questions from Guardian Australia, a statement from the QPS listed various measures it had taken to increase diversity since last year’s inquiry, including holding recruitment events in rural and remote areas; working with Tafe Queensland on a pathways to policing program aimed at First Nations people; creating an Indigenous recruiting program in August; and planning a similar multicultural program for April 2024.
Despite these measures, Carrington said that, based on the latest data, any efforts to increase diversity had clearly “not succeeded”.
While Carroll has acknowledged the importance of recruiting a more diverse workforce, the QPS has mostly framed its recent recruitment efforts as an attempt to arrest falling applicant numbers and increasing attribution rates.
“We have invested so much time … we are passionate in making sure vacancies are filled, that we have more police on the road to deal with demand,” the commissioner said at the press conference.
One element of the campaign was to offer incentives to encourage overseas officers to join. Monaei said international recruits “won’t understand the cultural landscape of what it looks like within our state, or from region to region”.
The state government also funded the Queensland Police Union of Employees to run its own recruitment advertisements. The union’s billboards feature people wearing hi-vis workwear and highlight the $100,000 salary for junior officers.
The head of the police union, Ian Leavers, who was recently criticised for writing an opinion piece opposing the state’s moves to treaty, told the ABC the union recruitment initiative came about because official recruitment campaigns did not “resonate with the target group and the people we want to recruit”.
“So we went to young people and we tested it – and what do young people care about? They care about money and lifestyle.”
Carrington said the union’s recruitment campaign “is sending entirely the wrong message” and has particularly worried workers in the domestic violence sector.
“If up to a third, and in some cases half, of police callouts are for domestic or sexual violence, why do they have a recruitment campaign focusing on the typical image of a bloke? It’s just a mismatch,” she said.
The QPS said in its statement that applicants were now asked during interviews to demonstrate their values and experience in regard to domestic and family violence.
“The QPS has sought to advertise, attract and recruit those working across the state in DFV support roles,” the statement also said.
The QPS also said it had established a standalone First Nations unit (at the urging of the inquiry) that was “committed to working to build trust and transparency and to improve policing practices with First Nations people”.
When asked about progress on the inquiry’s recommendations, Carroll told reporters recently that meeting timeframes had proved difficult but that it had been a “truly inspirational” year as the QPS attempted reform.
The police minister, Mark Ryan, has said the timeframes contained in the inquiry’s recommendations were “arbitrary”.
The police union was contacted and invited to comment.
Leavers has previously been critical of past 50-50 gender recruitment targets, labelling them “woke, pandering nonsense” after a controversial Crime and Corruption Commission finding that former recruitment policies discriminated against men.
The fallout from the commission’s finding was that the QPS no longer has affirmative action recruitment policies.
