Close personal protection officers who provide 24/7 security for the Prime Minister and all senior ministerial staff are "burning out" with very little downtime and insufficient compensation for their long hours.
CPP officers are the highly trained federal police "suits", Australia's equivalent of the US Secret Service.
Covertly armed and equipped with discreet radio communications, they are those suited officers trained to blend into the background on the "meet and greets", stay well out of camera shot, but always watching and assessing the constantly shifting security environment around their "principals", and ready to step in at a moment's notice.
It's a heightened level of vigilance which takes a huge physical and mental toll.
Many of these officers have told their association they are burnt out and desperately need more downtime.
Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana said the CPP are among the many federal police who love their job, and are completely professional at it, but are fed up with not being appropriately compensated for the pressure and expectations placed upon them.
On May 31, Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw told a Senate committee that in the "past four years, reports of harassment, nuisance, offensive and threatening communications against Australian parliamentarians has increased by 160 per cent".
"As of March 31, we recorded a 35 per cent increase year-on-year from 2023 relating to parliamentarians' movements assessed as a significant risk or higher," he said.
"In 2020-21, there were 279 reports. So far this financial year, there have been 725 reports.
"I am concerned about this trend - and we have seen recent world events that always keep the AFP alert.
"The AFP's role is to ensure the safety and dignity of our parliamentarians. We never take it for granted, but it is testament to our CPP - our Close Personal Protection officers - and the teams that support them, that we have not had an incident where we have had to save a politician from serious harm or death."
But it is that same group of officers that Mr Caruana says feel that "the job" is letting them down.
"If we gave them [CPP] a sniff of an opportunity that could walk off the job, they would do it; not because they don't love their job and want to keep their principals safe but because they are getting rorted by the AFP," he said.
"We currently have CPP members who are burning out.
"If the Prime Minister wants to go for a swim at 3 in the morning, his CPP team goes with him. So there is no rest for those members."
Pressure has now fallen back on the Australian Federal Police to raise its offer on pay and conditions in a new round of negotiations after 65 per cent of rank and file members of the Australian Federal Police Association voted to reject the AFP's latest offer.
Parliament House - not the CPP members but those doing the uniformed "overwatch" of the premises - and airports around the country now loom as the most likely targets of a scaled-up campaign.
There is also the potential for ACT officers, who are federal police officers contracted to work in community policing in the ACT, to become more actively involved in areas which do not compromise public safety, such as bail compliance checks.
Association president Alex Caruana said he would reach out to the AFP executive - which has two well-respected and former ACT officers in Assistant Commissioner Hilda Sirec and Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett as its key negotiators - for a meeting next week in an effort to head off a scaled-up campaign.
"Our members are bound by the AFP Act [of Parliament] so nothing we can do can affect national security or put people at risk," he said.
"That being said, I think the members are able to withdraw labour from certain areas of work, at national institutions like Parliament House and at the airports, where it's not going to put the community at risk."
He said there was a strong argument to suggest that should federal police walk off the job at airports, then those risks of that should be borne by the corporations which run those airports.
"That same argument could be mounted for Parliament House and other Commonwealth facilities," he said.
