Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Richmond, for your kind words just now. I spent more than 15 years in the WA Police Force as a frontline police officer. I retired as a sergeant this May after I got elected. I'm also honoured to have worked alongside many wonderful people in the police force.

Police officers face many challenges in doing their job. Police operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they must work in many different shift patterns: morning shifts, afternoon shifts, night shifts. Everyone knows shift work is unhealthy to your body clock and also to your family life, but as police officers we have to do it. When we are on duty, we never know what situation will arise and what we will be called to attend. It may be serious family violence, a fatal traffic crash, a group fight, an armed robbery, a sudden death or many more things.

Almost every day, police officers must attend to aggressive and confrontational situations and handle angry people where someone needs to be arrested. No-one likes to be handcuffed or escorted to the police van. As a result, our police officers are often verbally abused, kicked, punched, bitten and spat on. One of my female police officers, when she was trying to arrest a female drug addict, was needled by a black syringe. As a result, she and her husband were not able to live together for almost one year, because they were in fear of transmission of bloodborne disease.

My brothers and sisters in blue attended from job to job, often thanklessly. They may be tired and affected by what they have encountered, but, whenever they receive a call, they turn up and do their job professionally, without complaining. Then, at the end of the day, they return home to their families, keeping a brave face of normality from what they have experienced. The next day, it is time to start the process all over again.

Many police officers have experienced bad things while doing their job. For me, I can clearly remember the first dead body I picked up, some 15 years ago. While I am saying this, the smell of that dead body is still in my nose now. Over 15 years as a police officer, I attended many sudden death cases and picked up many dead bodies. This is just part of our daily jobs as frontline police officers.

One of my colleagues worked as a police officer for 35 years. He resigned from the police force when I was working in a country station. Later I met him in one of the Bunnings stores in Perth. I was happy to see him and I greeted him with a cheerful smile, but he looked into my eyes and walked away, without even wanting to speak to me. I was puzzled at the time, but three years later I met up with his wife, and she told me my friend had been forced to resign because of his mental health issues. He had suffered from PTSD as a result of his work. After his resignation, every time he drove past a police station or saw a police van pass his car, he would start shaking and shivering and would be unable to handle himself. He does not like to see any of his police friends, because it refreshes his memory as a police officer. My friend and his family have not received enough support from the police force or the government, and the community has no idea how much a police officer has to go through while performing their daily duties.

Police are only human. Police officers have put their lives on the line to serve and protect their communities. All of us respect the Defence Force because they fight for our country. Police officers are our guardian angels, protecting our life and property from harm and danger and keeping our communities safe: they deserve our appreciation too. This week is the national Police Week. I want to say thanks to all police officers from the bottom of my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you.

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