Page 300 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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The problem for the minister, though—and perhaps Mr Pratt was prescient when he put this bill together last year and said that the commission will end up doing this—is that the act says that the authority may appoint a public servant to be the chief officer of the fire brigade. But we have actually got rid of the positions of chief officers of the fire brigade, the ambulance service, the rural fire service and the state emergency service courtesy of Mr Corbell’s announcements yesterday.
The act further goes on to say under section 32 that there shall be deputy chief officers and that the authority may appoint a public servant to be a deputy chief officer of the service. But yesterday, by press release, we abolished deputy chief officers because they are now “operation managers”. From looking at the notes in the Emergencies Act, in particular reference to part 19.3 of the Legislation Act, I believe—and I am happy to be corrected by the minister—that these are statutory appointments. However, by a simple issuing of a press release, Mr Corbell has got rid of them. They are gone. There is no deputy chief officer fire brigade, rural fire service, state emergency service or ambulance service. They are just gone. So Mr Pratt is absolutely correct when he said that this work will have to be done by the commissioner. And it should be done by the commissioner. The commissioner, who is a statutory appointment, is responsible.
Mr Corbell gets up in this place and says, as he often does, “Mr Pratt is wrong.” But I think Mr Corbell needs to clarify how the change that was made yesterday exists under the law. When people consult the law—and God forbid that we end up with a coronial inquiry—and ask who is the chief officer of the fire brigade, there will be no position in the organisation chart listed as “chief officer, fire brigade”. If you look at the ACT emergency services’ business plan, it will be the rural fire operations manager, SES operations manager and operations manager urban fire operations, all reporting to the deputy commissioner, fire and rescue. There is not even a chief officer, fire brigade.
Mr Corbell will no doubt have a logical answer for this, and I am sure we would give him leave to speak again, but it just shows the ineffectiveness of this minister in dealing with these issues. He comes in here and says, “Mr Pratt got it wrong.” But, under the law, we have positions established by statute and I do not believe the minister can get rid of them that easily. I am sure there would be something about delegation but it would be interesting to know whether chief officer, fire brigade or chief officer, rural fire service are listed in the organisational chart. I suspect you would not find them in the organisational charts.
That is the problem with the way Mr Corbell has approached this problem. He opposes for opposition’s sake a reasonable bill that strengthens the way in which the Emergency Services Agency, as it is now known—and we wonder how long that title will last—operates. We wonder what will occur when somebody goes looking for these officers. We have had reform after reform. We have had confirmation today from the minister that they are now considering getting rid of projects like FireLink. This problem has arisen because of this haphazard sort of approach that the government has taken to emergency services since they came to office.
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