The Minns Labor Government have left Quirindi behind in the rollout of Audio-Visual Link (AVL) technology in courts meaning that local police are transporting accused offenders to Tamworth Police Station to appear before the court.

Member for Tamworth Kevin Anderson said the Labor Government’s failure to provide AVL technology at Quirindi courthouse shows that they did not consider the impact on regional towns.

“The Labor Government changed the way bail proceedings are handled in Regional NSW by centralising bail matters in Sydney via Audio Visual Link,” Mr Anderson said.

“As part of that change, Labor committed to ensuring that all courthouses would have access to AVL facilities, but more than 8 months on from the reforms, there are still no AVL facilities at Quirindi Courthouse.

“I wrote to the government in good faith last year to let them know that they had overlooked Quirindi in part of this change, hoping for them to resolve the issue.

“I have now received an incredibly weak response from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney General Hugh McDermott who has claimed that Quirindi was not a high priority.

“This is an outrageous walking back of their commitment to provide the technology across Regional NSW. Mr McDermott clearly doesn’t have any idea about the impact of this decision on our local police, and on the community.

“Police have enough work to do without having to transport offenders between Quirindi and Tamworth for bail matters. This takes our police off the streets and away from their core duty of protecting the community. Instead, they’ll be acting as glorified taxi drivers while they transfer the accused an hour down the road.

“Labor have broken their commitment. No town should be left behind by Labor in their bungled rollout of a centralised bail model.

“I’ll keep fighting, because Quirindi deserves access to the same services and technology as our major cities.”