Page 3186 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006
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moment, should impact on that volunteer nature and on the heart of volunteerism, thereby degrading capability.
Going back to this point about communities raising moneys: communities donating these moneys expect that funding will be spent by the brigades expeditiously as the brigades or units see fit in the defence of those communities. These traditional bank accounts, which contain the hard-earned fundraising dollars of individual units/brigades, are currently at risk of being taken out of the control of these brigades/units and put back into the cavernous coffers of the ACT government through departmental-controlled trust fund accounts.
The minister in this place yesterday pretty much denied that is going to be the case or that that is not the intention. He may well be right. The minister may simply be locked in by stupid bureaucratic initiatives taken by his bureaucrats. I hope that is the case, and I would like to see the minister give more account of his intentions and his attitudes about this current anomaly.
However, a letter recently sent by the Department of Justice and Community Safety’s chief executive officer, Ms Renee Leon, to all bushfire volunteers said:
The current storage of volunteering fundraising money does not comply with the Financial Management Act, because moneys raised by donations must be kept in a Territory trust fund not in an ordinary bank account.
She said in her letter to the volunteers that the “moneys raised by donations must be kept in a Territory trust fund not in an ordinary bank account”. That was like shoving a stick in a hornets’ nest. When that letter went out to those volunteer brigades/units, they were up in arms. The brigades/units are not being girlish about this; they are genuinely concerned by the tone of that letter.
Ms MacDonald: Someone is against girls.
MR PRATT: We might have a gender debate later. If I have offended you, Ms MacDonald and all people of other gender in this place, I apologise. Thank you for reminding me, Ms MacDonald. Shall I say it is not a case of their being limp-wristed, a bit sad or a bit soft; they are genuinely concerned. Their outrage, which we have seen expressed in the last seven days, is genuine. They are not putting on an act. They are deeply concerned. They say, “Why should traditional practices which go to the heart of volunteerism be threatened by bureaucratic practice?”
If Ms Leon’s letter is correct and if Ms Leon’s intentions as expressed in the letter are correct and are going to be followed through, this essentially means that the efforts of countless volunteers across the ACT would be in jeopardy, given the vague pronouncements in the Financial Management Act. The countless efforts of community groups who put out the donation bucket to raise money for a specific brigade/unit would be put at jeopardy if it was deemed necessary that all moneys raised by communities for brigades/units must be transferred to and held in ESA or JACS-run trust accounts; that is, the hard-raised money by communities for their or other brigades/units would be taken away and counted as territory funds or counted as government funds.
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