Page 3516 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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MR SMYTH: He says that the VBA already has it. Perhaps the minister would like to table the legal advice in the Assembly for members. I am sure the members who will vote on this bill would like to see the legal advice. Dr Foskey, do you have the legal advice? Perhaps you would like to see a copy of the government’s legal advice. Perhaps that is a courtesy that the minister might like to extend today to those of us here who are interested in this matter.
Mr Speaker, it is an important issue and it is important that we differentiate between the volunteers who do not get paid for their services and the expectation of the community. I have done the bucket brigade. Members of my brigade, Geyser’s Creek, have gone down to the Hyperdome in their brigade uniform and held out buckets and people have given the money to the volunteers for the work they do. They do not say, “Here is a donation to help the government help you do what you are doing.” I can assure you that they do not say that. I have been to the Tuggeranong markets, where my brigade regularly goes, and held out a bucket and people have very generously given to money us and we have raised a lot of money to enable us to pay for the mobile phones that we have had to buy and other equipment that the government does not provide. It is the community saying to us, “We support you in what you do.”
The notion that the minister is compelled to follow this path is just an indication of a weak minister being captured by his departmental bureaucrats and legal advice and not having the courage to stand up and say, “Look, that is silly.” The simple way to fix it so that it does not occur again is simply to put the accounts beyond the reach of the government. That is what they are there for. The doubt will remain with the proposed trust accounts.
The government’s counter position is interesting, Mr Speaker. The government’s counter position is that it will now set up individual trust accounts for each brigade into which the donations would be deposited by the brigade, with the signatories being volunteers who are already signatories to the brigade’s own accounts. Isn’t that what Mr Pratt is proposing? He is seeking to legislate for that because one of the concerns raised by the volunteer brigades association is about who will have the authority to change signatories. There are so many unanswered questions there. Who will be the signatories to these accounts? Who will set up the accounts? Who will actually have control over the accounts? What other provisions of the FMA will be provided for? Are the trust accounts to be with the ESA or with a recognised financial institution? What is the difference between our own accounts and trust accounts? Those are questions that need to be answered because what the government is proposing is still unclear.
Debate interrupted in accordance with standing order 74 and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour this day.
Sitting suspended from 12.33 to 2.30 pm.
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