Page 68 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2006
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You have got to understand this is a man-made urban forest we live in. It was a sheep station once; it did not have the number of man-introduced trees there. It is a man-made urban forest. And there are risks associated with living in a city of this type. The ESA’s task, through its volunteers, is to manage that risk. The propaganda that this clay man over there sent out to the good burghers of Kambah said, “I recognise that there has been a greater level of bushfire preparedness in the ACT.” Has he told us that? Short answer: no.
What he does not also acknowledge is that we recognise the extreme sacrifices that our volunteers make, to the extent where I have advocated that the out-of-pocket expenses for frontline, in the line of fire, volunteers be reimbursed through the income tax regime. This clay man’s mate up there on the hill, the honourable Philip Ruddock, dismisses it out of sight and says, “Do not talk to me about those semantics. I am not interested.” He said, “I am not interested. It is just cost shifting.”
Do I see this man across the chamber saying to me, “Good on you, Johnno; you go and get some justice for the volunteers”? No. All I hear about, all I read about and all I am told about is the way he denigrates volunteers, whether they be police, SES or RFS volunteers. All of those people are magic people, and they need our support. They do not need the bagging that he does day in, day out, to the extent where the police will not go to where he is any more. The SES people and RFS people say, “Do not invite him to anything, please, because one of us is likely to hit him.” All I can say is that I shall save them the embarrassment of that clay man’s attendance at our functions, because it is not going to happen. I reckon I have got about a carton!
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.38): I thank Ms Porter for providing this opportunity for me to speak about the importance of ACT emergency services volunteers, something that I believe we all acknowledge but sometimes take for granted. Sometimes people like to have an argument even when they agree.
I note that from 2002-03 to 2004-05 the number of ACT fire service organisation volunteers increased from 650 to 1,022, almost doubling, and the number of ACT emergency services volunteers increased from 180 to 244, as reported in the Productivity Commission’s 2006 report on government services in 2005. I believe that this may be a consequence of heightened awareness following the 2003 fires, one of the few positive outcomes of a catastrophe which brought our community together and which made some people want to continue community service and to do their utmost to protect our community from further fires and other disasters. But we should be aware that the Productivity Commission’s report notes under these figures:
… although volunteers make a valuable contribution, they should not be counted as an entirely free resource … governments incur costs in supporting volunteers to deliver emergency services in their communities by providing funds and support through infrastructure, training, uniforms, personal protective equipment, operational equipment and support for other operating costs.
So it is not only the number of volunteers we have that matters but also the support that our government provides for these volunteers, for without adequate resourcing there is only so much that they can do. It is alarming then to look at the figures in the Productivity Commission’s report under table 8.2, which show that the level of funding
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