Officers say anger over the drawn out process is not limited to the Police Association (file image). Photo: Marika Khabazi
The Police Association says it will revise down its final offer ahead of an arbitration panel's decision in the more than year-long dispute over police pay.
Officers are furious with the move, which they say will lead to more staff heading overseas.
In April more than 75 percent of voting union members rejected the government's deal, which included a flat $5000 pay increase for officers, plus another 4 percent increase in July and again in 2025.
Employment law specialist Vicki Campbell was appointed to head an arbitration panel which began deliberations last month to determine which of the final offers from the government and the Police Association would be adopted.
Association members received an email to this week alerting them to the backdown.
President Chris Cahill said the panel had given both parties six days to amend or restate their final positions, but the email provided no specifics as to how the offer would change.
"Based on the content of the proceedings, and because it is final offer arbitration in which the winner takes all, the assessment of your pay advisors and directors was to revise down our offer," Cahill said.
"This was done after much deliberation. In our collective judgement, with both the police case and association case before us, we deemed it necessary to improve the prospect of a favourable decision."
A police officer - who did not want to be named - said the move was a betrayal of association's members and called for Chris Cahill to resign.
"We thought we knew what the association position was going into arbitration and it was changed with no consultation. [The association] had six days to consider this, enough time to go back to the membership, to explain the situation and seek a mandate to change," they said.
Another officer - with over 10 years on the force - said the move would see more police officers heading to greener pastures overseas.
"Effectively, what [the association] have done is to reduce the offer that they put forward, making it no real change to what the offers were back in March - which was crap anyway.
"They won't even tell us what they have reduced it down to because they know that almost all cops will be pissed off at them even more."
Another officer, who did not want to be named, said he was considering quitting the association.
"People are really f***ed off. There's no doubt in police officers' eyes that the Police Association is completely impotent. They're too tight with police [employers] and they've really got no teeth.
"People say the only reason to be in the association is in case you shoot someone. I've seen people at work who've needed the association to help them with employment matters and [they've] just been totally ineffective, bordering on useless."
But they said anger over the drawn out process was not limited to the Police Association.
"I cannot understand how a police minister who purports to know what it's like to be a police officer can feel good about the fact that our colleagues in Australia are paid $40,000 a year more than us. How can any member of government or police executive feel good about that?"
A spokesperson for the Police Association declined to comment, saying it would be "totally inappropriate" while the matter was before the arbitrator.
