New Police Commissioner Richard Chambers promises he will be bold, “give his best”, and, while he may not always get it right, he “will learn from that and be better”.

Chambers was appointed to the job on November 20, the day before the Gangs Act came into force. By the time he took up the reins on November 25, Operation Nickel was well under way. The gang de-patching operation’s credo – “it’s the law, we will enforce it” – is not dissimilar to the new commissioner’s policing and leadership styles.

Chambers, who has been in Police for nearly 30 years, has a strong operational background. That makes him a good fit with a government that is “tough on crime”. He also likes to be seen, and not from behind a lectern: “My view on leadership is that you cannot lead from an office… [to be good at what I do] being visible and being very connected to frontline are critical.”

The new commissioner told Police News his immediate focus will be on core policing, supporting the safety, wellbeing and capability of the frontline, leaders being visible and accountable, and prudent financial management.

Leading questions

Police News asked for the new commissioner’s thoughts on five issues raised by Police Association members at the 2024 annual conference:

The employment investigation process

“[It’s] one of the things I intend to look at very early… because I'm hearing directly from staff that things are taking far too long…. So I'm going to be having a look at the current processes, and we'll need to make some decisions about it, and I think it needs significant improvement… The biggest issue that we need to address right now is timeliness.”

Lack of experience in critical roles

“We need to adapt to new things, technology, ways of communicating, life experiences, and we need to embrace the fact that, yes, we have quite a junior frontline in some places. I think that's a great opportunity, and actually, us older fellas have got a bit to learn from our younger people… it’s not something we should be getting frustrated about.”

Under-resourced workgroups

“We have had our challenges. We have no doubt we've lost some pretty good police officers to other forces… And I know that we've done a lot of work over the years to implement various recruitment strategies, but at the end of the day, the best recruiters are ourselves, and that's an organisation of 15,000 people.”

Unsafe, unfit buildings

“I haven't been briefed yet on all of those things… I will need to get my head around what current issues there are, what priorities are top of the list, and work really hard to find some solutions, because we can't afford to have our staff working in conditions that are substandard.”

Possibility of more job cuts

“What I would be clear about… there’s some cuts that need to be made to return the Government [savings], but the other part of that, and probably the bigger part of that for me now is actually looking for opportunities across the organisation to stop doing some things and reinvesting that cost into benefits. So I've got some ideas… I want to build our Reintegration Programme… The other one is in terms of technology. What technology is out there globally that allows us to do things better? And there is. I want to be bold when it comes to trying a few things.”