Page 4282 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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As I said, parliament is the correct forum, the only forum, to test or expose administrative competence or fitness to hold office. I would suspect that in this forum the test has exposed your lack of fitness to hold this office and your lack of administrative competence in the running of the Emergency Services Agency. The sooner the Chief Minister takes it off you, the better. And it would be better for a rookie to run it because they will do a better job than you are currently doing with it, minister.
You say that you have all these reforms that have been in place over the last half a decade. They have not delivered for the employees. It is not a safe workplace for the employees. I just go back to the defibrillator case where the commissioner said on the ABC that yes, it was adding to stress levels inside the ESA. But you said, “No, nothing wrong here.” And then you were the one who took the bushfire preparedness report from the Auditor-General and said it was a ringing endorsement. She said you broke the law. In answer to the questions I have asked about holding you accountable, you have said that tomorrow you will table the statement of capability that the strategic bushfire management plan has lacked for years—again, mismanagement from this minister of this incredibly essential service to the people of the ACT.
I think the employees deserve better. We did not hear a single word from the minister. No wonder the UFU dissociated themselves from the ACT ALP before the last election. We did not hear a single word about the concerns the staff, the fire and rescue staff, who work at the control centre have raised—not a word, just glossed over that. “I have put the new fire station somewhere else.”
Forget about what is going on now, forget about the damage that you are doing to individuals or allowing to occur to individuals, minister, because you have been reckless or irresponsible in performing your duties. This is why it should be outside the JACS portfolio. You have used JACS as a buffer. You have used JACS to distance yourself—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, could you address the chair please.
MR SMYTH: Through you, Madam Speaker, the minister has distanced himself from the ESA portfolio, and that is what is leading to these problems. These are not things that I just thought up, minister. I know you would like to have people think that this is some sort of illusion, that this is some sort of creation of mine. But these are issues that are brought to me—I say this through you, Madam Speaker—from the staff. It is the staff that have raised it. It is from members of Fire and Rescue, the Ambulance Service, the State Emergency Service and the RFS—and I will read the litany one more time—who have concerns about first responder medical pay and training, which the minister has not addressed, who want to know what the draft terms of reference for the capability review were and why it was never carried out, who have commented to me on the effectiveness of cross-crewing and who have told me they need a second Bronto. But no, he gets his filtered versions through JACS. And he says, “Not so.”
The post-incident debriefs are a big concern as, of course, is some of the equipment in the pods. In the Ambulance Service, it is the culture within the service. The Fair Work
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