Page 1988 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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to have it mobilised as its new digital data communication system. This is the system which was going to piggyback the primary radio network.
What was the justification for deciding on a single source tender? The justification was that the government, in its agency the Emergency Services Authority, wanted that digital data communication system, FireLink, mobilised during the bushfire season of 2004-05. It was so important to get that program mobilised and running by 2004-05, which was the justification for taking up a single source tender, only one player. All other possibilities were discarded.
As we speak, some two years later, there are still questions as to whether FireLink is now fully mobilised and fully installed in all of the emergency services vehicles which were identified as needing to carry digital data communications, and the budget has blown out by 25 per cent to something like $4.3 million. There are very serious questions around FireLink that go to the heart of this government’s expenditure on emergency services, particularly in terms of the family of communications programs. Is that why the government has imposed a $20 million levy? Is it to cover the gaps left behind by some of these blow-outs in programs?
We know from looking at the performance and history of the Emergency Services Authority, emergency services in general and the management of projects, that in 2005 there was a serious shortfall in personal protection gear. We know that units of the State Emergency Service and the Rural Fire Service were quite seriously neglected in regard to the provision of personal protection equipment and personal protection clothing.
It would seem that money has been set aside in the budget this year to make up for those shortfalls. I was pleased to hear in discussions with SES volunteers that the chainsaw chaps which were in serious short supply last year apparently have now been purchased and issued to all SES chainsaw operators. I was pleased to hear that some of the protection gear which had been in shortfall and in serious short supply has now been issued. If that is the case, at least that has been picked up, but after a couple of years of neglect. I am wondering whether the $20 million levy imposed on the Canberra community has been imposed to make up for some of those shortfalls and catch-ups in budget management.
Where has all this funding gone? The answer seems to be to more and more consultants, particularly in relation to the ESA’s headquarters, to additional bureaucrats in the ESA organisation and, of course, to an increase in the bureaucracy which has become the ESA structure to what we now see as an overblown bureaucracy. Of course, that flies in the face of the McLeod inquiry recommendations that an emergency services authority needed to be lean, mean, autonomous and properly equipped.
While I am on that, the ESA structure is one that can be trimmed, that can reside in cheaper headquarters than currently envisaged by this government and that can, and must, remain as an autonomous agency. I will have a bit more to say about that later. The opposition believes that the ESA must be—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Pratt, this debate is about the Rates Amendment Bill.
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