Page 2336 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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paying that amount of money on a monthly basis with only 20 people occupying a complex which is designed to house hundreds of personnel.
The RFS are currently operationally fractured from the ESA headquarters in Curtin. The RFS headquarters are located at Fairbairn, but they are fractured from the ESA headquarters in Curtin, in turn affecting the operational effectiveness of the ESA as a whole. Mr Assistant Speaker, I will point out to you another major observation and recommendation in the McLeod report. The McLeod observation about incident command and control systems—and I refer to page 119 of the report—indicated the urgent need for cohesive command and control to be a requirement, which had absolutely failed in the 2003 fires.
As a consequence of the splitting of the RFS headquarters away from the ESA headquarters, the incident command and control system has been severely affected. As an example of how this failed, on 3 October 2007, in the current financial year, when a total fire ban was introduced, it was necessary to take the command and control, the operations communications element, out of the RFS headquarters and relocate them for the day back to Curtin. That is just ludicrous. It is ludicrous that we have the ESA headquarters split, with a minor element sitting over in Fairbairn and, when the balloon goes up on a fairly minor matter, it is necessary to relocate people out of Fairbairn back to Curtin.
There are many questions to be asked about what has happened at Fairbairn. There are urgent questions about the operational effectiveness of the ESA headquarters and what the government is going to do about that. On top of that, there are questions about financial management and whether the territory has got the best value for its dollar in the way they have undertaken this particular project. Did they make a mistake in selecting Fairbairn? Instead, should they have simply upgraded Curtin? Or was there a third option available to them at the time? What we see at the moment is a very unworkable situation.
There are still questions about the very large tanker required by the RFS. It was identified as an urgent requirement some time ago. (Second speaking period taken.) We still see a delay in the introduction of this project. This brings into question the state of the RFS vehicle fleet and how fit that fleet is. There are concerns amongst the ranks that the ESA may well be acquiring the wrong tanker model—a South Australian model. I am told by the captains that the captains group no longer has the same professional influence that they used to have in acquisition decisions, in terms of introduction of new types of equipment or systems to the service. They are not particularly happy about this. I want to know why the government has gone totally to the South Australian model tanker and did not look at the Victorian model, which I understand the captains would much prefer.
We are also seeing the running down of the RFS headquarters. What we see in place now is a toe-cutter exercise. Going back to the point I made earlier, it seems the government are hell-bent on saving money. If it means they will save money by cutting capability then they are going to cut capability.
We in the opposition have tried very hard to acquire the Stuart Ellis report which was undertaken some time ago, which we believe is a report that looked at trying to cut
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