VICTORIA Police has a new bunch of recruits, Andrew Bolt writes. Many are women and while some are welcome, are their numbers weakening the force?

The Gazette even named the men and women I might one day need to call on to break up some brawl, disperse some Cronulla-style riot, smash into a gangster's house or clear some picket.

So it's hello to the members of Squad Four of 2007: Kylie, Tegan, Suzanne, Leanne, Jacqueline, Clive, Rachael . . . and hmmm.

There's a pattern here, I begin to suspect, being trained as a journalist to pick up subtle clues that might escape you, gentle reader.

To be sure, I check the April 5 list of constables newly appointed to our Victoria Police by Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.

Same story. From the top again, I read their names: Cassandra, Daniela, Kerryn, Joel, Julia, Louise, Kristen . . .

I make calls to confirm it's true: two-thirds of these newest recruits and constables are women -- and that's far from unusual now.

As it turns out, that's also fortunate, since Nixon has given the force until July to make sure 25 per cent of her officers aren't men.

Wait. The people in charge don't like the way I sniff these lists. This isn't affirmative action hiring, they insist. No, it's all merit based.

And perhaps, in a way, it is.

After all, under the Bracks Government -- so keen to seem progressive in a 1980s way -- the tests for police recruits have been changed in ways that help women a lot. Women, that is, who want to be police, rather than to call for them.

Here are four of those changes. Once recruits had six minutes to complete their physical test; now they get an extra 30 seconds.

Once they had to be able to climb a wall 1.8 metres high. Too hard, so the wall was lopped to just 1.6 metres.

Even that proved too high for the ladies, so now there's no wall-climbing test at all. Also gone is that dragging of a weighted bag at speed.

And bingo! Sure, our police are now more feeble, but see how many are now women!

As the Auditor-General noted in a report on police manpower: "Since 1999, the proportion of female applicants who successfully completed the (fitness) test is over 80 per cent, compared with approximately 30 per cent in the 1990s before the changes were made."

Little was spared to shoe-horn more women into our force -- even women who weren't much good at policing or wanted to leave.

As the Auditor-General put it: Nixon now had "special support for women throughout the recruitment process, and follow-up with women who fail stages of the process or withdraw".

What other rules were bent, what other sly help given, to make sure women were hired above the men that have long been first to volunteer for the job?

Never mind that. Nothing seemed as important now as smashing not the mafia, but the maleness of our police.

I exaggerate? Then note that the Australasian Council of Women and Policing, of which Nixon is president, last year gave its bravery medal to our Sen-Sgt Janet Mitchell for "challenging the strongly masculinised culture of the Police Association and her advocacy for women and cultural change".

It all worked a treat, if your main aim is to have a feminised force, rather than the most effective one.

The percentage of female recruits went from 27 per cent in 2000 to 41 per cent two years ago, and is even higher now. What an abrupt change it's been -- a force that was 80 per cent male only two years ago is now hiring classes of recruits that are 60 per cent female.

But I must be fair. Nixon says more women actually make the force stronger. For a decade now she has spruiked her new doctrine -- that policing is no longer about upholding the law.

"Policing is about keeping the peace," she said in 1996.

"It is only when we begin to attempt such a reassessment that we begin to see how well-suited women are for the task."

These were honeyed words to this Government, which hired Nixon to practise on our force what she had preached, and create what she boasted would be a "non-authoritarian" culture.

Of course, when you redefine policing like that, there are some things you no longer like your police to do. The most obvious, as we've seen, is clearing the streets of mobs breaking the law.

Note how Nixon's force just stood back at last year's anti-G20 riot as protesters smashed windows, trashed a police van, invaded shops, destroyed a bank's charity box, vandalised signs, kicked police horses, blocked roads, terrified local workers, stole a policeman's baton and injured nine officers.

Just seven protesters were arrested that day, most hours after the worst damage had been done.

Only after a public outcry and months of expensive detective work were more suspects picked up in raids as far away as Sydney.

It's true that using police muscle has been made risky by crusading lawyers and activist magistrates.

But the force Nixon is developing -- less fit, less strong, less authoritative -- may soon be physically unable to do much other than such hands-off policing.

Already some male officers warn of having to protect weaker female colleagues in a brawl or take their place at picket lines that turn rough. Others claims that policewomen on patrol have called for backup at jobs two men could do on their own.

Yet others complain that women officers gravitate to desk jobs -- particularly once they are pregnant -- leaving men to do the hard stuff.

Be clear. I don't dispute there are many police jobs that can be done by women. I'm even sure that women tend to be better suited at some aspects of policing of the more calm-down kind.

But I wonder if this rush to recruit more women is leaving us with a force able to do all we'd like. What corners are being cut? Are we hiring recruits with the right talents, or just right gender?

As you consider this, imagine another G20 style riot -- this time outside your factory, shop or office. Or a gang of party-crashers in your street, out for trouble.

You ring for the police to come clear the mob, and watch as the cavalry arrives.

Hey, don't go all pale. Just say hello again to Kylie, Tegan, Suzanne, Leanne, Jacqueline, Clive, Rachael . . .

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