Page 3874 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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professionalism. We hear the minister run the old furphy that the government always runs—that the opposition is being mean and nasty to the men and women of our services. That is just a stunt; that is just a diversion.
The effectiveness of our emergency services is a matter that must be reviewed by the Assembly as we now approach the height of the bushfire season. We think that the effectiveness is a mixed bag. At the unit level, our front-line units strive to be as effective as they can be. Our four services are professional, and we can be proud of them. However, at the strategic, bureaucratic and ministerial support level, our emergency services and the emergency management system are being dramatically let down. This impacts adversely on their effectiveness.
We have a good Bushfire Council, finally. I thank the government or at least acknowledge that the government has got the Bushfire Council more actively involved than it has been in the last four or five years. But the Bushfire Council is also quite concerned about and frustrated with many of the organisational matters. The RFS, the SES, the Ambulance Service and the Fire Brigade are working hard. They are well organised and they are well led at the unit level, but they are simply not supported.
The government dramatically reorganised the services during last year’s government rationalisation, fundamentally destroying the independence of the emergency services authority as established on the back of the recommendations coming out of McLeod and further encouraged by Coroner Doogan. The government feebly argues that the operational independence and responsiveness of the ESA and its units was not affected, but nothing could be further from the truth: any half-educated observation on the state of the services proves the government claim to be a lie.
Furthermore, the men and women in our front-line services have overwhelmingly rejected the government’s restructure. That was demonstrated clearly on 15 March 2007 when the volunteers—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Pratt, I think you should withdraw the allegation that the government is lying.
MR PRATT: I withdraw that, Mr Speaker. On 15 March 2007, the volunteers, with widespread sister service sympathy, went out on an unprecedented strike. Who will forget that day? I am sure that Mr Corbell and Mr Stanhope still have sleepless nights remembering that day. Mr Corbell subsequently made all the right gestures—I will acknowledge this—when he directed the commissioner of the ESA, Mr Manson, to sit down with the volunteers and other permanent staff, consult with them and review the organisational changes which had been made in 2006 and about which the volunteers were deeply concerned. I take Mr Corbell at his word and appreciate his gesture, but I must lament the fact that he has been unable to ensure that there has been any completion on those tasks. They have not been adequately completed; they simply have not been done.
Further, it must be lamented that Minister Corbell has failed to ensure that the relations so deeply damaged in March 2007—and in the months prior to Christmas—
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