Page 1236 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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MS LEE: Minister, did the government advise Canberra Indoor Rock Climbing that they could open?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: My understanding—again, if I am not correct about this, because I have only just seen some of the correspondence in relation to this, I will come back to the Assembly—is that, as they are a sports facility, they can open with a maximum number of 20 people if they are able to meet the requirements about equipment sharing and the cleaning of equipment that is shared. My understanding is that the determination has been made that climbing-walls are to be considered, in this regard, shared equipment. So it is not that they cannot open; it is that they need to be able to meet those requirements.
ACT Emergency Services Agency—volunteer compensation
MR WALL: My question is to the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Minister, I refer to media reports on 28 May 2020 which revealed that ACT volunteer firefighters were still waiting to receive their compensation payments for income lost while fighting bushfires around Australia. You are quoted in the media as saying that the ACT government has started processing applications and volunteers should expect payments to arrive “very shortly”. Minister, have the volunteers now received their compensation payments?
MR GENTLEMAN: I thank Mr Wall for his question. It is an area where we were forthcoming, if you like, in writing to the Prime Minister after we heard that New South Wales volunteers were going to receive some payments for their time—those who fit the criteria that the commonwealth has set. We were successful in obtaining agreement from the commonwealth to fund those people across the ACT. What the commonwealth said was that each jurisdiction had to set up their own system of payments and claims for those payments and the whole process, so that is what we did.
We did it through an expression of interest process where we asked volunteers who fitted the criteria if they would put forward an expression of interest. We would then process those expressions of interest and make those payments where appropriate. That is going forward, as I mentioned, as Mr Wall mentioned, in the press conference. But I understand that volunteers have not yet received the payment. It should be due shortly, but at this stage the last briefing to me was that they had not received it. Originally there were 12 expressions of interest, and I think in the end six people had gone forward with a claim for the payment.
I should point out that the commonwealth gave us no time lines on how to set up the process. In the course of our work with our volunteers, they were given no time line, except that they should put their expression of interest in as soon as possible. The agency is dealing with it as best they can. They have not done this sort of work before. They will process those as soon as they can.
MR WALL: Minister, why is it taking an unacceptably long time for volunteers to receive their payments, and will you inform the Assembly when payments will start flowing to volunteer firefighters?
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