Police are playing down any talk of deploying the Defence Force to deal with the protests outside Parliament. 

Officers are focusing on containing and gradually shrinking the protest site. 

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says hundreds of the Police's 10,000 staff have had to be diverted from other duties to deal with the situation. 

But he told Mike Hosking there are no plans to request Defence Force assistance at this stage. 

“That’d be a very extreme situation, I don’t think any of us wants to see soldiers on our streets and that’s unlikely to land in a good place for us as a country, particularly in the longer term.” 

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