A new report shows that the Federal Police will be short $20-31.3 million, and the shortfall may come at the expense of “other priority areas”:

Mr Beale said his audit found that existing funding for the 500 new officers – announced in the Rudd government’s first budget in May last year – currently fell short by $31.3 million over the five-year plan.

The 268-page report also warned that from 2013-14 – a year after the last of the 500 recruits are sworn in by the AFP – there will be a $20m-a-year funding shortfall, which “will need to be drawn from the existing base funding of the AFP at the expense of other priority areas”.

“One potential priority area could be these close operational support areas, meaning that these skills and resources, which were not increased in proportion with the additional 500 sworn investigators, could potentially actually be reduced to meet the funding shortfall on the sworn investigators salaries,” he said.

This just goes to show that the Government should spend the money slated for the $44 million internet content filter on funding the Federal Police – who will actually catch criminals and child s-x offenders.