Page 3515 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
treasurer’s report and the annual general meeting minutes. That would not be hard, minister.
Mr Corbell said that this bill is grandstanding and that it is a knee-jerk reaction. No, it is not. It was quick, it was decisive and it was appropriate. Mr Pratt is to be congratulated, because he went out and talked to quite a number of both RFS and ESA volunteers, commanders and captains and they said, “We want a quick answer and we do not want this to recur. We do not want the government to put their grubby paws into our accounts again and we want it to go away so that we can get on with what we volunteered for, which isn’t to fight the government. It is to protect the community.” The amount of time that this has taken up of the volunteer hierarchy is appalling when there is a simple, neat, elegant solution in front of the government, endorsed by the volunteer brigades association.
Again, in response to Ms Leon’s letter to the head of the VBA, the VBA put up some questions or dot points. They put up seven dot points. This has only happened in the last couple of days, Mr Speaker. What does dot point No 1 of the VBA say? It says, “Why is the legislative change proposed by Mr Pratt not being pursued by the government? This would seem to be the best option still.” It is what the VBA would like. It is what the volunteers want, it is what the brigades want and it is what the units want, but it is not what the government wants because the minister has been captured by a bureaucracy and they are not going to let him go.
Mr Corbell said initially that this matter would take some months to resolve and we might have an answer by the end of the fire season and that we are going to have a working party and a committee. A really simple, neat answer is to legislate to change it and acknowledge that the money is not government money. It is not, by the minister’s own word, money managed by the government that should be subject to the FMA. It is not managed by the government. Either the minister is disingenuous in what he has been saying to the brigades and he actually intends to have these trust accounts managed by the ESA or he has shot his own argument in the foot because, as he said, the FMA applies to moneys managed by the government. Ms Leon says, “We want to make sure that we do not interfere with the way they spend their money. We just want to have it in accounts.” So you have got this contradiction from the minister all the time.
The question is: why has this matter taken so long? Mr Pratt put this bill on the table almost a month ago. The minister has had a month to consult. The bill is a neat solution. It could go ahead today and this matter would be over. That would be a clear endorsement by the minister that the money is not government money, that the money is not subject to the FMA, and that we can go ahead and let the volunteers do what they want, unless, of course, the minister is saying that the volunteers are now government entities. That is not something the volunteers would take kindly to, it is not something that I believe volunteers believe they are and it is not something that I believe that the community believes volunteers are.
The minister said that he has got some legal advice. Perhaps the minister would like to table the legal advice. It is always nice to put your cards down.
Mr Corbell: The VBA already has it.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .