The Police Occupational Pathways Project was established in response to the Public Skills Australia 2025 Public Safety Workforce Insights Report.

The report identified increased pressures on police workforce sustainability and emphasised the need to better understand the drivers of police specialist occupation shortages.

The term “specialist occupations” refers to policing roles that focus on a specific area of law enforcement requiring advanced training beyond a general duties police officer, such as forensics, crash investigations or bomb technical response.

To address workforce pipeline challenges associated with specialist occupations, Public Skills Australia is collaborating with Australian policing agencies and the Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency to:

• Identify drivers that may be limiting specialist occupation capacity across policing agencies.
• Design innovative pathways that recognise employees existing skills to increase employee transferability into specialist occupations.
• Provide policing agencies with insights into the common skills across policing to support pathways between specialist occupations.
• Determine how the Vocation Education and Training (VET) system could support efforts to address shortages in specialist occupations.
• Provide recommendations (if relevant) to streamline training package products to increase inter-industry skills transferability.