Who would be a cop? Not me. Especially after all the things we’ve been hearing about how disgusted they are with the pay offer that’s landed on the table from the Government. 

The government that was all pro-cop before the election. But now seems to be putting the screws on the police just as much as the last government did. 

I was at the traffic lights the other day and there was a cop car next to me. And I remember looking at the two officers and thinking about the work they do while I waited for the lights to change. 

I thought about how it must be really exciting at times. But that would probably only be now and then. Because, let’s face it, a lot of the time it’s probably pretty boring as well. And depressing. 

And I thought about how it’s one of the few jobs people do, where they can legitimately say that they can’t assume they’re going to make it through a shift without something happening to them. 

With pretty much every other job these days, there are all sorts of health and safety precautions. Accidents still happen, of course. But if you’re a cop, you’ve got no idea what’s going to happen next. 

And, as we’ve seen all too often, sometimes they don’t make it home in one piece. Sometimes they don’t make it home at all. 

But something I didn’t think about when I was sitting at the lights next to that patrol car the other day, was whether either of the officers inside might have a side hustle to help pay the bills. 

I also didn’t wonder whether either of them are turning to food banks. That’s because I’ve always assumed that, because of the work they do and the danger they put themselves in at times to keep us safe, that they’re paid pretty well. 

And I have been shocked to hear differently in the past 24 hours, as the Police and their union have responded to the pay offer from the Government. 

As Chris Cahill, from the Police Association, puts it: "We've got a Government that's made it very clear they want to get tough on crime.  

"They're expecting police to step up to crack down on gangs, they're expecting us to increase our policing of youth crime, they're expecting us to lower the road toll."   

But he says, at the same time as all these extra demands are being placed on cops, there are officers who are "struggling to pay rent, to pay their mortgage, to put food on the table". 

Now you can probably say that about a lot of people. Most people. We’re all struggling to varying degrees. But when your job is to keep every other Tom, Dick and Harry safe, you should be recognised and rewarded for that. 

You might have heard Chris Cahill comparing what we pay our cops to what we people like social workers and the $20,000 pay gap after six years service. 

He says the vast majority of officers are still constables after six years - so that’s a lot of officers earning less than social workers. 

And he made it very clear that he wasn’t having a go at social workers and nurses. He’s not saying they don’t deserve what they’re paid. He’s just saying that it’s nuts that police don’t earn as much as those people. And I totally agree. 

What’s more, sometimes police end up doing the work of social workers with all the mental health callouts they have to respond to, don’t they? 

Chris Cahill says cops aren’t allowed to go on strike and he thinks the current government —and other governments too— have taken advantage of that. Knowing they can’t walk off the job. And I think he’s spot on. 

Think about it - it’s the old squeaky wheel thing, isn’t it? And, when it comes to pay talks, the ultimate squeaky wheel is a whole lot of striking workers out on the street with signs and megaphones and drivers tooting in support. That’s the squeaky wheel. 

The cops can’t do that, so why would governments bend over backwards for them? They wouldn’t. And they aren’t. And the police, rightfully so, have had a gutsful. 

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