The head of the NSW police union has rebuked One Nation leader Mike Newman for using frontline officers for “point-scoring”, after he highlighted a recruitment photo of a young Indigenous officer wearing an Aboriginal flag pin to criticise “DEI political positions”.
Newman, a former trade commissioner now leading the populist party in NSW, included the photo in a lengthy Substack post this week in which he criticised Police Minister Yasmin Catley over what he claimed was her “woke DEI-infested management of the cops”.
Newman claimed Labor “enforces pronoun training and other woke DEI programs that take 15,500 hours off the beat every hour wasted on virtue signalling”, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
He singled out an officer who featured in recent police recruitment advertisements wearing a pin which showed both the Aboriginal and NSW Police flags.
Below a photo of the officer, he wrote: “Sorry, the only differentiation in police uniforms should be rank. It is not a pin board to promote DEI political positions.”
The decision to single out the young officer prompted a reprimand from Kevin Morton, the head of the NSW Police Association.
“It disappoints me when politicians use our police officers for political grandstanding, that’s what I can’t cop,” he said.
“She’s proud of her culture, the police force have had no issue with allowing her and other officers to wear that pin. The police designed it, and they’ve put it in their dress policy. Those officers shouldn’t be used for a political point-scoring exercise.”
The comments also prompted condemnation from Catley, who called it “disgraceful”, and said individual officers “should not be dragged into political attacks”.
Newman denied he had targeted the young officer personally, saying that he had “no issue with who she is”. Rather, he said, he was criticising what he called “making a political point on a uniform”.
“She’s wearing an Aboriginal flag on her uniform. I’m pointing out it’s a problem. It has nothing to do with her,” he said.
“The uniform’s not there for people to put their own personal identity on top of what they do. They should just be proud to be police officers rather than [suggest] that somehow her identity makes any difference.”
The image was taken from a police recruitment advertisement. In a video posted by police, the officer based on Sydney’s northern beaches talks about the benefits of being on the force.
“It’s a way to let people in the community know that we identify [as Indigenous] and that we’re there, and it can really make people feel more comfortable if they’re a bit uneasy with police showing up,” she said.
Newman was unveiled as One Nation leader last month, and will run in the Hunter Valley seat of Cessnock. He apologised last week for what he called a “foot-in-the-mouth moment” after he told a rally he wanted to stop abortions in the state.
He has sought to link what he describes as “DEI” police policies to the long-running shortage in officer headcount and broader community concern about crime.
Despite record recruitment numbers, NSW Police said in August there were about 2500 vacancies in the force. About 719 new officers have joined the police so far in 2026, while about 300 have left.
He has repeatedly singled out what he says is enforced “pronoun training” on officers, and also took aim at LGBTQ training, telling the Herald that it “demoralised” officers and diverted resources from stopping crime.
The NSW Police rolled out police training related to the LGBTQ community in 2025 in response to a recommendation from the Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTQ Hate Crimes.
The landmark commission into dozens of unsolved suspected murders of members of the LGBTQ communities in NSW between 1970 and 2010 uncovered major shortfalls in the way those deaths had been dealt with.
“It’s just nothing but political agendas,” Newman said. “Public servants have got to stop this ideological obsession with ideological training, thinking it serves a purpose. It doesn’t. Crime is not coming down. Police are focused on stuff devoid of what policing should be.”
“It all links back to the government is all about woke.
“It’s a woke government. Yasmin Catley is woke. All of this is on her watch. They’re all down the identity rabbit hole.”
The police minister slammed Newman over his comments, saying: “Singling out an individual police officer who is simply doing her job is disgraceful.
“Our police officers serve the community every day, often in difficult circumstances, and they deserve to be treated with respect.
“NSW Police protect all of us, and individual officers should not be dragged into political attacks.”
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
