AUSTRALIAN PRISON OFFICERS ASSOCIATION
Powered by Workers First for Those Who Serve
It's simply time to make a change and for too long Prison Officers in Australia have been forced to accept the representation cast upon them as 'trade unions'.
The truth is, Prison Officers and the associated industries including Immigration and Youth Detention, Watchhouse Officers, Security and Intelligence Officers and Investigators are all deserving of specialist representation.
Matters such as the use of force complaints that are all too frequent and easy to make and the subsequent investigations that follow are highly complex matters and simply being a 'union organiser' is not enough.
The be effective and efficient in representing these challenging callings, representation must be legitimately qualified, appropriately motivated and resistant to inappropriate influence or attempts to engage in corruption.
In 2019 the Royal Commission into Union Corruption in Australia made several findings which included strong recommendations we ought to all be concerned by as members of the law enforcement and criminal justice community in Australia.
Central to our collective core values is that most high commandment that we shall not mix with persons of ill repute.
Bit of a stretch? perhaps but take on board the point that we need to focus inward for self-management on representation matters, information management and growth in terms of strength in our collective potential for influencing significant change in the public opinion of our professional standards.