Page 505 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 14 March 2007
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They are worthy of congratulation but, more than that, they are worthy of being heard. This minister has a record of failure. He was removed from education, he was removed from health and he should be removed from the ESA. In all those cases he failed to listen. It is well and good to stand in this place and laud our excellent emergency services staff—and we do, in particular the volunteers who do it for community reasons—but we do not listen to them. Mr Corbell rejected the evidence of Mr Jeffery, stating that it is not appropriate to take into account what he has to say about the structure in which he will face fires. He is not entitled; he does not know.
Mr Barling, the head of the VBA, and Mr Cortese, who speaks on behalf of SES volunteers, obviously do not know either. So we will pat them on the back, stand with them and bask in the reflected glory of a job well done, but we will not listen to them because they disagree with us. The government is not up to the intellectual challenge of meeting what the volunteers and professional officers have said. The first activity on page 14 of the ESA’s 24-page business plan entitled “Governance enhancement”, which is all we will have, states:
Undertake and provide a gap analysis between current practices and government standards.
The government does not even know what is wrong with the ESA and why it does not work, other than that it overruns its budget. There has been no analysis of what has gone wrong but the government says, “We will change its structure. We will fit it to our financial constraints because we have ruined the budget over a number of years, and then we will do an analysis to make sure that we plug the gaps.” Will we have another review followed by another change to the arrangements? No, we will not, because we have an arrogant minister who will not listen to those who know what they are saying. It is interesting that not one person, other than the minister and the commissioner, has said that this is a good thing.
Anybody else who has commented on this has decried the fact that it will fail and leave the people of Canberra at risk. That will be the minister’s legacy. He may well have subjected the people of Canberra to more risk. We all heard from Val Jeffery, who said, “This will be worse than 2003.” We all heard from Pat Barling, who said, “This is a kick in the guts because those on the ground who go out to fight the fires will be put at risk by these reforms.” The minister’s defence is to say, “We have operational independence enshrined in legislation.” I carry a set of legislation when I go out on the fire ground and, Mr Speaker, I am sure that when you responded to calls from the fire brigade you took a piece of legislation in your backpack because it was really useful.
On the day it does not matter that operational independence is enshrined in legislation. Emperor Napoleon, the man who conquered all of Europe, summarised these sorts of crises into one simple line. He said, “An army marches on its stomach.” It is all about logistics. Under the Corbell model of madness for the Emergency Services Authority the bureaucrats, bean counters and the department control the logistics. So let us not hide behind this line that operational independence is guaranteed by law. Operational independence is guaranteed by having the resources in the structure to do the job. If you do not have the cash you cannot do the job.
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