Page 64 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
despite the superficial boasting by the government here today that numbers have increased.
All of this raises serious concerns about this government’s ability to support those volunteers that so willingly give their time and energy to work for the safety of their community. If this government cannot properly resource the ESA to ensure that volunteers are well trained, supported and resourced with the right equipment, then ultimately not only will the volunteers suffer but so will the community as a result. In the ACT landscape, volunteerism is very, very important. As Ms Porter has quite rightly said, it is an integral part of community life. Also, the community really depends on that volunteering capability. If you do not have government support, financing, resourcing and training, then volunteers are going to be peed off and are going to drift away. And that is not what we want to see.
I remind this government that they must ensure that they do not neglect our emergency service volunteers. It is not just recruitment of volunteers but retention that is paramount. In order to retain their interest and their service, they must be well equipped and well trained. They must also be at least compensated to a reasonable degree for personal loss in the line of duty.
The secret here is good government policy aimed at successful retention and successful ongoing recruitment—that is the only way we can attract and keep good volunteers—and building on policy. Then comes the financial commitment needed to properly implement that policy. But that financial commitment is sadly falling short of the mark under this government. We have seen that, and the evidence is very, very stark.
I want to turn some attention specifically now to our CFU volunteers. Ms Porter raised in her speech the good initiative taken by government, which we support, to try to develop the CFU capability. The rollout of the volunteer CFU program has been stalled by this government’s lack of ongoing financial commitment to ensure the safety of our vulnerable suburbs. The government has brought in at least a part of the strategy to ensure the safety of our vulnerable suburbs. The government has been slow to capitalise on the volunteer goodwill and the strong community willingness to see the development of the CFUs. They have been slow to support, train and resource them properly.
Currently, I understand, we have on the books around 700 CFU volunteers. There is plenty of goodwill and plenty of desire for people to roll up and join these units. But at the latest count, of the 700 who put themselves on the books, only 450 have been trained. This is all evident in the 2005-06 budget where the CFU program has been neglected. The outstanding commitment to increasing the number of CFUs to 80 has not been met. Vulnerable suburbs that have expressed their demand for CFU teams have been abandoned.
If we are lucky we may see some further expansion of the program in future years. The government has certainly committed to that but we have not seen the commitments financially to at least give the opposition the confidence that this program is going to continue to roll out and at least make up for the lost time in the raising and training program. However, we question whether the poor state of their budget and the predicted budget deficit for next year is going to allow this to happen. To date, we have only 28 of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .