Page 911 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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to let a staff member go. I think we have to understand the reasons why some firms would not let a worker go. But to those that were in a position, often at great expense to themselves, to allow workers the time off, indeed, to the bosses that took time off from their businesses and the self-employed people who put aside their own work at great personal expense to go and serve the broader community, we acknowledge the huge role you played in facilitating volunteers being able to go.
To the public, thank you for your prayers and the dollars and the goods that you sent. Thank you for ringing and making contact friends in Victoria. Keep it up. It does not stop. It will not stop for months. Please do keep it up because they do appreciate it.
It might sound a bit luxurious, but where we were eating was slightly different from where we were sleeping. In the middle happened to be the Beechworth Bakery, which is Victoria’s foremost and best-known bakery. The hospitality we were shown there was just fantastic. You would be sitting there and person after person would come up and say, “Thank you.” It was much like here in 2003. They truly are grateful. There were different patches there from all the different services—from New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. The sense of security that gave to those who really suffered cannot be underestimated. It is just tremendous.
I would like to relay one story to the Assembly. When my unit first arrived on the fireground the unit leader went off to have a look at where we were going, so we went up and chatted to some Victorian CFA chaps. As we got closer to these three guys who were putting in a back-burn, they got older and older and older and older. The senior guy in the group was 72. He had come across from Yarrawonga, which is probably about an hour or an hour and a half away from where we were. He was absolutely cheerful and absolutely dedicated and he said was not going home until the job was done. You know, if I am still fighting fires at 72, I have to say I will be very pleased. I am sure Mr Corbell would agree with that as well. He was not going to stop. Nothing was going to defeat this guy. For me he was the epitome of what was going on there.
We had a guy called Mouse, who was the bulldozer driver. Now, as you can imagine, if some bloke gets called Mouse and he drives bulldozers, he is not, and he did not act like one. I do not know where this guy came from because we said to him, “Do you know where you are?” He said, “I’ve got no idea. The boss said, ‘Cut me a firebreak down there,’ so I will and I’ll keep going until he tells me to stop.” I do not know how long this guy had been going on this particular night. Just about nothing would stop the Mouse. If you needed to know anything, the Mouse was the man to speak to.
We returned on the buses on Sunday. People were very happy that they had been, but they were also very happy to go home. As the minister said, they were going home to their families, and to get there and see the families there to welcome you back I think is just a very solid reminder of why volunteers volunteer. They do it for their community; they do it for those that they love and then they do it for the community and for their country. I think there was a great deal of satisfaction on those buses going back. They deserve that satisfaction.
Those who were here might remember that after the 2003 fires I suggested that the government might like to put a medal together for the volunteers, which the
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