Page 3514 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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Mr Corbell says that they are protected by OH&S laws and they are given legal protection—in effect, that they are public servants. If you want them to be public servants, pay them. It is a service we could not pay for. The hundreds of thousands of hours that are committed every year by rural fire service and state emergency service volunteers could not be paid for by any government. We have a weak case from Mr Corbell. It is weak because he is just relying on a legal argument in saying, “We got some advice that said we have got a problem that we have to fix.”
I have some more problems for Mr Corbell. It has been raised by me that, in fact, the ESA and the government have their own trust accounts and there might be money in those trust accounts that was given to the government for the use of volunteers. There was a “Big Kev’s” barbecue, an Aussie barbecue, at which I think something like $25,000 was given to volunteers. Perhaps the minister will come back and tell the Assembly how much of that money actually got to volunteer units, or is it sitting in a trust account held by the ESA?
I understand that every now and then brigades get donations. One that comes to mind is the sum of $800 that was paid to a particular brigade and had to be sent back to the organisation concerned by the ESA so that it could make out the cheque again. Why was that so, Mr Corbell? Some years ago, if my memory serves me right, BHP donated something like $1,500 to every brigade in the country in acknowledgment of their service. Did the brigades ever receive that money, Mr Corbell? Perhaps you could go back to the bureaucrats and the lawyers who are directing you, telling you and pulling the strings here and ask them whether that money was paid accordingly to the volunteers, as intended. I would be interested in some answers there.
Mr Corbell says that they are government entities. Are volunteers and brigades government entities? Are they part of the government? No, they are not. They are not paid. They are volunteers. Yes, what they do comes under the auspices of the government and the government assists them in what they do, but in the end it is done in their time. I can assure you that whatever people contribute—the assistance, the sandwiches, the pies, the cakes, the doughnuts and the cash—is given to the volunteers as a thankyou from the people of the ACT and I can assure you that the people of the ACT do not want that money going into any account that is controlled by the government.
Mr Corbell says that he is working through it with the volunteers. That is true. Ms Leon is doing a good job. She is trying to address concerns. Mr Corbell said in his speech that these accounts will all be subject to annual audits so that they comply with the FMA. The accounts are audited already. How do we know that? I know it because my brigade’s accounts are audited and I am a volunteer. Ms Leon says in her letter back to the VBA, “The trust accounts would be subject to annual audit, but I understand that already occurs with the existing accounts.”
As to the notion that we have to audit the accounts so that we can make sure everything is hunky-dory, it is already being done. If the ESA does not already receive copies of the audits, I am sure that it would be really easy to pick up copies of the documents because, to give them credit, the ESA officers normally attend most of the AGMs. I am sure that they could pick up there a copy of the audit document, the
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