Page 1997 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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It has operated pretty well for the past 13 years. I am not aware of anybody being knocked off by the council in terms of the council disagreeing over a proposed appointment. But when it is removed, the council will have no role. In effect, the council will be allowed to comment on the criteria that will be used to select the people who fill these vital roles. That is all they will do. This is gutting the council. In many ways, you might as well just get rid of the council. I cannot think of any appropriate appointment that has been made. But this is about giving the commissioner total power.
For a number of years, I understand that the council, in its written reports to the minister, has raised concerns about some of the levels of experience in some of the RFS officers nominated to perform the key incident management roles, particularly for level 3 incidents, the big incidents. Just about every year in estimates and annual reports hearings I have asked how many controllers we have with skills at levels 1, 2 and 3. If you are running a level 3 fire, you are going to need lots of people to back each other up over a period of days, potentially with multiple incidents running all at the same time. The numbers that have come back have been very scary, and people have said to me that some of the numbers that have come back are not particularly accurate.
There are some concerns that out at the Mount Clear fire we perhaps had an inexperienced RFS officer make a wrong call, and what could have been a very short fire became a very long fire. That is the problem. That is what the minister is proposing we back this evening.
Clause 5 says:
The commissioner must consult the bushfire council before making a guideline … required for the appointment of a volunteer member of the rural fire service to a senior rank of the service.
In effect, this is peer judgement, so it is quality assurance. That is not an unreasonable thing to have for such a potentially serious event. It says that the chief officer of the Rural Fire Service must consult with the Bushfire Council. That is omitted in clause 11. Clause 15 is the same. This is in relation to the deputy chief officer. They will not have to consult now with the chief officer of the RFS; they then will not have to consult over the appointment of the deputy chief officer. Then there is clause 15. Then in clause 46 is the appointment of the terms. I do not believe there has ever been a problem with somebody staying too long on the council, and when ministers over time have wanted to change the council, those things have happened. The process is working quite well.
You can say that eight years is a long time. It probably is. But I think it is working well at the moment. We are managing to keep experience and we are managing to get the new experience on. It is about a shift in power. That shift goes back to the commissioner. It is unfortunate, because it is not needed and it is not required. This is the community through its Bushfire Council, making representations or giving advice to the minister and having a look beyond what the commissioner is doing. That is a good thing, particularly with the experience that we have been blessed with on the council over the years. I think it is a shame.
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