Page 1451 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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MR CONNOLLY: No, we cannot. These reports went into extensive detail about appropriate levels of fire service, numbers and national fire standards. So we cannot reduce to below fire standards for safety. We need certain levels of fire officers. We should be using them for other purposes. A fire officer is essentially there to fight fires. When there is not a fire you have a limited range of other activities you can sensibly deploy that person to. A police officer, on the other hand, is highly trained in the basic policing skill of crime fighting and community protection. If you decide to redeploy police officers from standby to rescue, you can have them out in the street fighting crime, you can have them on beat patrol, which is where, Mr Humphries, the majority of this community would rather see their police officers. If you asked anyone, "Would you rather have a police officer on standby at Weston or out in the street on crime fighting duties?", I know where they would prefer to have the police officer.
Mr Humphries, you have regularly told the Government that we should be focusing on sharpening crime fighting policing. That is exactly what we are doing. We are utilising the highly trained services of the Fire Service, a service which is not overresourced. Your basic premise is wrong. Your claim for an inquiry or a report is purely a stunt. That is demonstrated no more than by the statements of three of your colleagues in the last debate on this subject when they said, "The time for reports, the time for wringing our hands, is over. Act decisively, Government, and end this squabble about road rescue". We have done that. You want to reopen it.
MR MOORE (4.17): Madam Speaker, it seems to me that my support for this motion is dependent on the premise that it is forward looking, that the purpose of this inquiry is not, as Mr Connolly says, to open up old wounds. I emphasise that I am supporting this on the premise that the inquiry will not do that. We have a situation where we can recognise what Mr Connolly has achieved already in the amalgamation in terms of efficiencies, and I think that recognition is contained in the motion. It seems to me that we should accept that the inquiry proposed by Mr Humphries is one that says, "Okay; now what are the next steps?".
I remember sitting over there next to Mr Connolly, behind the pillar where Ms Ellis is right now, as a member of the Opposition. Mr Connolly and I were members of the Opposition when Mr Humphries was in the Alliance Government and the people responsible for these issues were two people who are no longer here, Mr Collaery and Mr Duby. On many occasions we said, "It is crazy that those two cannot get together and work out what are clear overlaps, what are clear inefficiencies". So I have been delighted to see attempts finally being made by Mr Connolly to take action on some rationalisations. If I were not to support those rationalisations, I believe that it would be quite hypocritical of me. I have said on many occasions publicly that it is time for rationalisation, for example, of road rescue services. I have never indicated which way I would prefer those road rescue services to go, because I felt that having one Minister responsible for the two areas was appropriate.
Mr Connolly, it may well be that you continue to think, as you have suggested, that we are impossible to please. It is probably a function of being in opposition or being a crossbench member that we will always be seen by the Government to be impossible to please. I do not see it that way with this motion, and I must say that Mr Humphries, when he showed me this motion in its original form, was
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