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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2540 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Another thing that impacted on me was that I saw a few people there that I had once worked with. It was touching to see those people, their faces showing signs of anguish, working with other emergency workers as they toiled away. I understand that formal urban search and rescue training and equipping in the ACT is a recent event. It is certainly something that has happened since I was in the service. In earlier days one would always respond to these things but not deal with them in such a well-trained way.

Even so, some of those emergency workers were people I had worked alongside at various times or been in charge of. In fact, some of them were even stationed with me at various times. You could imagine a little bit of what was going on in their minds as they worked through the rubble and tried to rescue those who could be rescued. I noticed a couple of ACT Fire Service vehicles in the background, one of which had been designed by ACT firefighters. It gives you a great sense of pride to have been associated with people who responded to the call when necessary.

It is absolutely necessary for us as legislators and as responsible elected people to ensure that people involved in that sort of work are provided with every support they need. I am not suggesting for a moment that they have not been supported, but we should keep in focus the need to provide every support that they need in their calling. Too often these things are forgotten between incidents and they come into focus only at an incident. I remember some years ago in the parliament on the south side of the lake an issue being raised about the number of workers compensation claims that firefighters made. It is essentially true that in those days firefighters were encouraged to ensure that note was always made of even the slightest injury in case it came back on them at a later time. Somebody had collated all of these notifications of injury - many of them not requiring any attention at all or any expenditure - and had criticised the firefighters because of the number of notifications.

The Federal Government is now talking about undermining workers compensation provisions by weakening the entitlement to workers compensation in the Federal legislation. That legislation affects our emergency workers here in the ACT. Among the other things that I have mentioned in the course of my contribution to this debate, I wish to focus on that issue. One of the issues affected by that legislation is the issue of stress. I would like to attract the Minister's attention to this. Later on he might read the transcript. Firefighters and other emergency workers will be affected by the legislation which proposes to change the workers compensation provisions. Of course, that legislation will be decided by the parliament on the south side of the lake.

What I am saying to you is that this Government has to make a stand in relation to that issue because there may be some ideological position that the Liberals on the hill have taken in relation to Federal public servants, but nobody here is entitled to take that same view. I am concerned that not only emergency workers but a whole range of workers are going to be affected by this attempt to undermine access to workers compensation provisions. One issue which I mentioned a little while ago is the issue of stress. Of course, that is a significant issue for emergency workers. It has been a significant issue for a long time, recognised in different ways over time and dealt with in different ways. I saw in a recent print media edition some criticism of some of the stress counselling. At the end of the day, I think we in this place would all agree that we have

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