Page 3512 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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applies in relation to acceptable standards of behaviour, workplace harassment and so on. These standards also apply in the volunteer setting.
Mr Speaker, for all of these reasons, I believe that we need to have a consistent approach. We can apply the requirements of the Financial Management Act whilst still ensuring that volunteer brigades are able to accept donations and manage those donated funds in ways which are for the purposes of their unit or brigade within the emergency services arrangements. That is all we are trying to do. There is no agenda to take money away. There is no agenda to diminish control. There is no agenda to undermine the relative autonomy that brigades and units enjoy in this manner. But there is a commitment to ensuring that the appropriate requirements of the Financial Management Act are met, and that is what we are seeking to do.
The government believes that this bill is a knee-jerk reaction by Mr Pratt, a grandstanding move to say, “I will fix the problem. I will just exempt the brigades and the units from the law.” That is not a good piece of law-making. Since this issue has come to public attention, there has been a series of, I believe, very constructive discussions between the ESA and representatives of the volunteer brigades association and individual brigades and units. That has, I think, come quite some considerable way and I am hopeful that agreement will be reached quite soon on an appropriate model that will allow brigades the autonomy and flexibility they need in managing funds donated to them, but also ensure that the requirements of the Financial Management Act are met.
This is, at the end of the day, an administrative matter that can, I believe, be worked through sensibly and in a sober environment. The proposal put forward by Mr Pratt is not one that the government supports, because it simply says in a knee-jerk, absolutist way, “I will fix the problem by saying the law does not apply.” I do not believe that is sensible or reasonable. The Financial Management Act is there for a reason—to ensure that all moneys managed by the government, whether they are public moneys or other moneys, are properly managed and that that is done in a consistent way and in a way that ensures that when the actions of agencies are audited these matters can be declared and recognised as being done in a way which is consistent with the legislative requirements set down by this place.
Mr Speaker, there has been a lot of energy put into this debate by some quarters, notably by Mr Pratt, but from my discussions with volunteers I know two things. First of all, I know that volunteers, as always, are frustrated with issues around bureaucracy. That is inherent, I think, in our volunteer ranks generally. My commitment to them has been to say, “This can be done in a way which eliminates or minimises the level of bureaucracy”. Let’s face it, even brigades themselves have bureaucracy around audit and so on. It is about minimising it, and I believe that can be done.
The second thing is that I know that the brigades and units want this issue resolved as quickly as possible. That has been my commitment to them, that we will work these issues through and that all options will be on the table as we work these issues through. This proposal really cuts across that discussion. The volunteer brigades association and the government have reached agreement that we will talk these issues through, that we will negotiate them and we will get an agreed outcome, and nothing will change until we get that agreed outcome.
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