The announcement of a $45 million station for Canberra's emergency services at Acton has drawn a sharp reaction from the AFP police association, which says its members feel "undervalued, frustrated and annoyed" at the lengthy delays in providing them with better accommodation.
Gungahlin police station is seen as the most urgent priority by the union, which has been agitating for many years for an expanded facility to serve one of the fastest growing population centres in Australia.
Gungahlin's joint emergency services facility, which is shared by police, ambulance and firefighters, is too small for a modern, community-focused police station. It cannot accommodate a complete crossover shift of police officers and has no space for a team of detectives, like every other police station in the ACT.
When police seize items such as weapons and blood-stained clothing, they have to be processed on the officers' lunchroom table.
"Imagine having to eat at a table that 20 minutes beforehand was used to sort property that may be contaminated by blood or bacteria," president of the Australian Federal Police Association, Alex Caruana, said.
"This is a health and welfare risk. The members deserve better than that.
"A new Gungahlin police station should have been the utmost priority. This is a station which has been running 24/7 since 2009.
"Police gave that 24/7 operational commitment to former Labor Police Minister Simon Corbell on the understanding that a dedicated police station would be built in the near future.
"Eleven years on and we're still no closer to that.
"Gungahlin now has a population of well over 75,000 people and is the fastest growing area of Canberra.
"Our members, who risk their lives every day to serve the community and do it very well, deserve far better than to be working every day and night in cramped and unsuitable premises.
"The only reason that Gungahlin station functions as well as it does is due to the can-do attitude of the members that work there and an excellent officer-in-charge who manages an under-resourced station. The building itself isn't fit to be a functioning police station."
In 2017, the ACT Chief Police Officer revealed a vision statement called Policing for Tomorrow's ACT, in which future facilities were promised to be "fit for purpose, in the right locations, support mobility and enable a dynamic and effective response to the needs of the ACT community".
The Liberals' police spokeswoman, Guilia Jones, said that Gungahlin station was "one of the many areas of our policing infrastructure that is not fit for purpose".
ACT police headquarters at Winchester flooded so badly in January that parts of its operations area were deemed an unsafe working environment, and a section of the Intelligence area had to be abandoned when water cascaded inside and ran onto the computer terminals.
The large, flat roof of the Winchester building, which originally was built in the 1950s to serve as a technical training centre for apprentices, is unable to cope with heavy rain.
City Station is a heritage-listed building and is similarly fraught with design issues. The North District Superintendent's office and the adjoining Officer-in-Charge's office often has water running out of the ceiling during heavy storms.
"City Station and the Winchester Police Centre may as well be colanders when it rains, they leak that much," Mr Caruana said.
"The Traffic Operations Centre is outright disgusting and in such a poor state that I'm not sure it be repaired to a satisfactory level."
The Traffic Operations Centre in Lathlain Street, which is shared with the planning team, was awash during January's storms and is barely large enough to accommodate all the operational vehicles.
A spokesperson for Police Minister Mick Gentleman said that the government was "committed to improving the facilities for our police and emergency services".
"This is informed by strategic planning that guides upgrades and new constructions," he said.
"Any new station requires extensive feasibility work to assess the area's needs and undertake in-depth exploration of options including upgrading existing facilities and constructing new facilities. This feasibility work is underway for Gungahlin and Belconnen police stations, which will inform the government's next steps."
The AFPA has called on both sides of politics to make an election commitment toward either building a new police station in Gungahlin, or build a new centre for the ACT Fire and Rescue and ACT Ambulance Service, and give ACT Policing the current station and fund a proper, full building refurbishment.
