For years his day (and night and weekend) job was homicide detective – a man used to being quoted on matters of life and death.

He is Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles, recently appointed as Police Association secretary.

As a murder investigator he spent a career interviewing suspects who lie, sob, blame others and then try to do secret deals. Which leaves him perfectly qualified to deal with desperate politicians in a tight election race.

The Police Association is a remarkable beast. As union membership around Australia plunges it maintains a 98 per cent subscription, it doesn't use the threat of a strike as a weapon (the last one was in 1923) and it works to get pay rises for management as well as workers.

It is a working example of former US president Theodore Roosevelt's expression "speak softly and carry a big stick" (or in this case a truncheon).

At a time when federal governments control the big-picture items such as the economy, state elections are run on quality-of-life issues such as schools, roads, education and the big one – law and order.

And as we move into campaign mode, all politicians worth a how-to-vote card want to wear the sheriff's hat when it comes to taking on the baddies.

Politicians on both sides of the fence believe that when Jeff Kennett lost the police and the nurses before the 1999 poll he lost the election.

As one senior adviser said recently: "You don't win a PR war with the cops."

Four years ago the Coalition government came to power perched high on the law and order horse.

It's promised an extra 1700 police, plus 940 protective security officers to staff every Melbourne railway station every evening, more prisons, more police stations and tougher sentences.

We now have more cops and more prisoners than ever before, with another 2600 cell beds in the pipeline.

In the past few days the government has flagged the introduction of a mandatory 10-year minimum for a death instigated by a one-punch attack, and new asset seizure laws that are no longer conviction-based.

These days a civil libertarian in cabinet is about as rare as an un-photographed penguin at Phillip Island.

One Coalition promise that didn't quite add up was to provide two PSOs for each Melbourne railway station. Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said a couple of months ago: "If you do the sums, they won't get to every station."

Premier Denis Napthine responded: "We're committed to delivering the 940 PSOs and we're delivering them at two per station. We'll deliver fully on our promises."

But recently the government has quietly increased the number by 96 to 1036, which means the chief is better at maths than the Premier. Standby for a spelling bee.

The government says the PSO initiative has been a remarkable success and it would appear the travelling public is reassured by their presence.

The trouble is there is no career structure, and many will leave out of sheer boredom. And police who could be on patrol ferry them to and from their posts after they pick up their work kits.

Some PSOs see the position as a stepping stone to joining the police force, where they will get credits for their 12-week training course.

Last week the Police Association began what will be a very public campaign that will run until November's state election.

Its first salvo was to call for politicians to commit to an increase of 1880 police over the next four years.

Both parties are staying coy, but when it comes to policy time they will enthusiastically join the bidding war, which will certainly underwhelm Lay, who took the unusual step of calling on politicians to think before committing to more recruits.

In his blue paper on the future of policing, he questions the traditional methods saying: "There must be change."

Lay says just increasing police numbers can be a waste of time and money.

He wants to close some police stations to put more cops out on the road, appoint more specialists such as accountants and rebuild the pathetic computer system.

Politicians nodded sagely, thanked him for his contribution and then seemingly threw the blue paper in the bin.

The truth is, in a neck-and-neck election, no one will stick theirs out by closing cop shops.

A police station has never caught a crook, although some suspects have been hung out the window in the hope fresh air would stimulate their memories.

People scoffed when one fellow claimed he was given some upside-down hang time out a window, until they found his initials about a metre under the windowsill. He must have been an acrobat. They even had nets in the Russell Street police station stairwell, in case a suspect turned out to be an escapee from the Moscow Circus and wanted to leap several storeys to freedom.

Lay says there are too many stations too close to each other in areas where the crime rate is well under control.

He wants district super stations, rather than one in every suburb, in the belief that virtually all crimes are reported by phone or uncovered on patrol.

Too many police, the critics say, are sitting in stations at night playing Angry Birds rather than out on patrol dealing with angry men.

The government has set aside $12 million for a station in the mean streets of Forest Hill – about three kilometres from the Nunawading complex.

Politicians love to be photographed opening police stations, not closing them, and so that part of the blue paper is already dead.

The government has spent or will spend about $100 million on 10 expensive station upgrades, four new complexes and a series of new training facilities.

While the government can build what it likes, the Chief Commissioner is in charge of staffing, which means some 24-hour stations remain firmly shut at night.

Lay has said he wants priorities to change, with more task forces, more specialists, more targeted policing, a more flexible workforce, and he has flagged that some duties, such as supervising station cells, should be privatised.

Iddles has responded that task forces may be great but they should not be funded at the expense of traditional police on the road.

"We're not against task forces, we're not against those specialist squads, but the community need them on the street to actually respond to those 000 calls," he told the Melbourne Press Club.

"When your loved one is walking down the street, whether it be your mother, your sister, your brother, and there's an ice addict kicking them to death or seriously assaulting them, sadly it's not the taskforce that's coming out, it's not the chemist in a white coat that's coming out. The only one that can respond is the person in the blue uniform, the first responder."

What nobody talks about is the extra expense that comes with extra cops. They need training, desks, supervisors, cars, equipment and novelty office coffee cups that come out of Lay's budget.

So we have a weird situation in which politicians will give the chief cops he may not really want.

Iddles wants 1880 extra cops, while Lay wants a new direction.

Iddles has made an opening vendor's bid in the law and order auction. Both the government and opposition will soon raise their hands and we will end up with more police.

Nothing is surer than the fact both parties will go down the Iddles path, rather than the Lay one.

The real issue is not a vote winner, because it is a boring one. The police computer system is a joke, the legacy of a series of horrible decisions costing hundreds of millions over the years. Cops who thought rebooting was what you did to a stubborn suspect were left to make complex IT decisions, and made a total hash of it.

It is so bad that police spend nearly half a shift doing paperwork and administrative chores; they still use faxes and have a radio system that really hasn't changed since Leonard Teale was staring in Homicide.

The police force will remain inefficient until it is fixed, and that won't happen in the next election cycle.

New Zealand police have just moved to smartphones and iPads, so they can call up a suspect's image online and complete reports while on the road.

It may be more Dick Smith than Dick Tracy, but it works.