An Australian police commissioner has apologised for using a force helicopter to fly to an interstate conference and says he won’t make the same mistake again.
Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush flew from Melbourne to Hobart for a meeting with his counterparts from around Australia and New Zealand on Monday.
A commercial airline flight between the two cities takes about an hour.
Bush said in a statement more effort should have been made to find a commercial flight but using the helicopter didn’t cost taxpayers extra.
The force’s helicopters were leased and a certain number of hours were already paid for each month under the agreement.
“I’m sorry that I made a bad decision,” Bush told ABC radio on Wednesday.
“If we’d been patient, more diligent, we would have booked a commercial flight and… would have been the most appropriate course of action.
The helicopter stayed in Hobart on Monday night but Bush wasn’t sure if that was due to weather or a technical reason.
While there was one less police helicopter in Melbourne that night, it didn’t impact operational matters, he said.
Taking the chopper was a bad decision because of how it was perceived and because a different call could have been made, he said.
“It was the wrong call… perceptions are critically important to the public,” he said.
“I will not be making the same mistake again.”
Victoria Police also has a fixed-wing aircraft but a spokesperson said that plane was “deemed unviable due to strong winds in Tasmania” on Monday.
Bush instead used a police chopper that’s mostly used for training and also acts as a backup for the force’s main helicopter.
There were “no additional financial cost associated with this flight” as the chopper wouldn’t exceed its allocated hours in October, the spokesperson said.
Bush went to Hobart for the Australian and New Zealand Police Commissioners Forum, where cross-border police operations, national security decisions and police deployments were discussed.
New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers joined him on the helicopter flight, as they had attended the same counter terrorism conference in Melbourne.
Bush will return to Melbourne on a commercial flight.
It’s the first major faux pas by the chief commissioner since taking on the job in June following a tumultuous time for the force.
His predecessor Shane Patton resigned after an overwhelming no-confidence vote in his leadership from officers in the police union, linked to an 18-month pay dispute.
A police spokesperson said the only other time Bush had used a force chopper was when he flew to Porepunkah in northern Victoria to the scene of a deadly police shooting in August.
