The Advertiser: DPP’s office `critically’ understaffed [26may05] By CRAIG BILDSTIEN
ONE hundred more prosecutors would not be enough to properly support the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, new chief prosecutor Stephen Pallaras, QC, warned yesterday. In a Budget-eve plea for extra funding, Mr Pallaras said he was “deeply concerned” that his staff were labouring under “critical and untenable” workloads. He claimed an additional $1.2 million for his office announced by Attorney-General Michael Atkinson ahead of today’s Budget was “not enough” and called on the Government to “wake up to the fact”.

Despite Mr Atkinson’s comments that Labor has “dramatically” increased funding to the DPP from $7.5 million to $11.45 million, Mr Pallaras signalled that his office was “in trouble”. Mr Atkinson says the Government has boosted the DPP budget by 63 per cent since coming to office, but Mr Pallaras said it is “almost useless and certainly unhelpful” to talk about percentage increases. Mr Pallaras said prosecutors were working in an environment of “burdensome stress and pressure”, managing up to 70 files each and working late at night and on weekends.

“As I see it, that’s part of the fall-out from the political processes that we are involved in,” he said. “The political environment is now affecting us. It affects us in what we need to respond to, in the manner in which we do our job, and in a very public sense, because we are under public scrutiny.” However, he rejected suggestions his comments could inflame his already public confrontation with Premier Mike Rann over the Kapunda Road Royal Commission and DPP resources.

“The Premier needs to know what is happening in this office, and who better to tell him than me,” he said. Mr Pallaras would not reveal if any of his staff were on stress leave, but did admit the high workload was contributing to “mistakes, and I want to remove that”. The current staff level of 110 was “well short of the mark”. “We could put to use twice that number, but I’m not saying that is sufficient,” he said. “We cannot keep treating people in the way that we are . . . they do a tough job and they need to be looked after. “There comes a time when someone has to stand up and say enough is enough.”