Page 2534 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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funding the government is playing catch-up for the decisions it has taken in the past two years.
I want to talk now quickly about the disgusting treatment of the volunteer brigades. The Stanhope government has today denied the ACT Volunteer Brigades Association a fair go and has again misled the ACT community about deep concerns held by the brigades over the ongoing dysfunction of the emergency services. I am commenting on events today in the ACT because we saw the VBA denied a decent hearing—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Desist from reflecting on a vote in the Assembly.
MR PRATT: (Second speaking period taken.) Coming out of the exercise, the VBA continues to be concerned about events around the restructure of the ESA and the failure to consult properly. It will be very interesting. It is a very large challenge now for this minister and a relatively new commissioner to bring those volunteers back into the fray. I do not know what the feeling is going to be after what has happened in this place today, but there is a lot of morale building to be undertaken three months out from the next bushfire season.
I go on to talk about volunteer bank accounts. That is yet to be resolved, and until they are resolved the morale problems will certainly go nowhere. I welcome the funding that we have seen, the $226,000 to be spent on the roll out of 10 new CFUs at least in the next year to enhance bushfire protection measures around the suburban edge, but this still leaves us short about 15 to 18 CFUs. I do not know where the funding will be coming in the future or how long it will take to complete the need. In this place we have talked often about the strategic bushfire management plan. I have not seen much progress towards having in place a confident array of bushfire operational plans to make sure that the preventative planning is undertaken in advance of the next bushfire season.
I want to now talk briefly about the overall capability, the loss of corporate knowledge. We have lost five or six senior officers from the emergency services since about October last year. Apparently there have been about 45 resignations from middle management and above across emergency services in the past nine months. There must be a terrible loss of corporate knowledge. There must be a terrible loss of experience even at the basic training level. This does not auger well for the emergency service, coupled with the morale issues coming out of the 15 March industrial action, the resignation of the captains and vice-captains, and the need for things to be re-built.
I now want to talk about the Fairbairn relocation. There are no grand announcements in the budget. In fact, the minister was tight-lipped in estimates when asked what the status of the move was. Last year’s grandstanding budget press release culminated in the statement: “The full move is expected to be completed mid-2007”. Apparently that was the objective stated last year, that the entire array at Curtin would be relocated to Fairbairn by mid-2007. In estimates the minister was very tight-lipped. It was like pulling teeth but he had to admit that only a small proportion of the headquarters arrays had moved and he was pretty coy about how long it would take to relocate the rest of the headquarters and the training units that had to be co-located with them.
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