since becoming commissioner<\/a> in June, Bush said more effort should have been made to find a commercial flight \u2013 which usually takes an hour. He said the use of the helicopter didn\u2019t cost taxpayers extra.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry that I made a bad decision,\u201d Bush told ABC radio on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019d been patient, more diligent, we would have booked a commercial flight and [that] \u2026 would have been the most appropriate course of action.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there was one fewer police helicopter in Melbourne that night it didn\u2019t impact operational matters, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the wrong call \u2026 perceptions are critically important to the public,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will not be making the same mistake again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victoria police also has a fixed-wing aircraft, but a spokesperson said that plane was \u201cdeemed unviable due to strong winds in Tasmania\u201d on Monday.<\/p>\n
Bush, a former New Zealand police commissioner, instead used a police aircraft that\u2019s mostly used for training and as a backup to the force\u2019s main helicopter.<\/p>\n
He had travelled to Hobart for the Australian and New Zealand Police Commissioners Forum, where cross-border police operations, national security decisions and police deployments were discussed.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand police commissioner, Richard Chambers, joined him on the helicopter flight, as they had attended the same counter-terrorism conference in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Bush will return to Melbourne on a commercial flight.<\/p>\n
The commissioner has been widely praised by the government and the police union since taking on the job, after a tumultuous time for the force.<\/p>\n
His predecessor, Shane Patton, resigned after an overwhelming no-confidence vote in his leadership from officers in the police union, linked to an 18-month pay dispute.<\/p>\n
A police spokesperson said the only other time Bush had used one of the force\u2019s aircraft was when he flew to Porepunkah, in northern Victoria, to the scene of a deadly police shooting in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Victorian police commissioner who used one of the force\u2019s helicopters to fly nearly 600km from Melbourne to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-242730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}