Page 3311 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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way brought us where we should be in terms of being adequately prepared for the extreme weather conditions facing us this fire season.
Six weeks ago I was prepared to say, and I said, that I thought the government was better prepared now for the 2006-07 fire season than had been the case for a number of years, even though I was uneasy at that time about what I perceived to be a leadership vacuum and the reinstated choking bureaucracy we had seen in 2002-03 with the ESB-JACS arrangement. But I was wrong.
I now know that, despite an ineffective ESB and other systemic problems, the previous Humphries government was better prepared in 2001 than this government is now. At least the Humphries government had the majority of its first responder vehicle fleet intact, serviceable and ready for the bushfire season. This government does not. The minister does not seem to have known that and certainly did not care to know. If nothing else, that attitude—a failure to accept ministerial responsibility—alone at least deserves censure. And there is much more.
Fundamentally, the minister’s emergency capability, which is severely degraded—and that is causing much angst amongst the volunteer brigades and units which this government is failing—revolves around front-line firefighting, command vehicles and communications. Let us look at the state of the vehicle fleet. I refer to a document that has been delivered by the minister, through the chain of command, to the volunteer units. Let us have a look at that document and the state of the vehicles—the documentary proof of the state of your vehicle fleet, minister.
I refer for example to the command vehicles. Six out of the eight command vehicles are beyond age and are not operational or serviceable. They are beyond their life. Eight out of 18 tankers are beyond their useful age. Four light tankers out of 14 are beyond their age, and unserviceable. Of the eight tankers beyond their useful age, 25 per cent are way out of date by a good three or four years.
In summary, approximately 40 per cent overall of the first line responder firefighting vehicles are unserviceable. As at 13 October, on a day of high fire warning and the 13th day into the bushfire season, 40 per cent of this minister’s emergency capability—first line response firefighting vehicles—were incapable of deploying. That is deplorable. That ought to be a sackable offence—the fact that such a large proportion of this minister’s emergency management capability was off line.
Let us have a look at the bureaucratic bungling that we now have with JACS and the ESA. The emergency services authority, as we know, is now the Emergency Services Agency. The old ESA has been transferred back in under JACS, sucked up under the mother ship back into a bureaucratic morass. Where the ESB failed in 2001, 2002 and 2003, according to the McLeod inquiry, because it was overwhelmed by the JACS bureaucracy, this mob over here have learnt the lesson by reinstating the model.
The autonomy where Commissioner Peter Dunn and his authority had to make quick, responsive, operational decisions unencumbered by bean counters, administrative agencies and others, has now been removed. Chief officer Michael Ross, who heads the rural fire service, has a budget of only $2.7 million because JACS knows better.
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