Recruitment has struggled to keep up with attrition, as auditor general Brendan Worrall noted in November last year.

He found the promise of hiring 2025 additional police personnel by 2025 – which he noted had never been “informed by evidence-based analysis of demand for services” – would not be met.
 

In fact, police office numbers grew by fewer than 100 between 2020 and 2023 – and actually fell by more than 200 last year, because of a 47 per cent jump in resignations.
 

The problem with today’s announcement is that all the government is doing here is patching over past promises it has failed to achieve.