Page 500 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 14 March 2007
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Mr Speaker, the government will not agree to the reconstitution of the ESA as a statutory authority because it is not necessary and it is not financially responsible. The government has agreed to implement, fully or partially, 61 of the 73 recommendations made by Coroner Doogan. Of those, 51 have already been fully or partially implemented.
The ESA’s new three-year business plan which I, along with the commissioner, released recently details the direction the agency will be taking to improve its operational effectiveness and highlights the key priorities for the next three years. In conjunction with the plan, two deputy commissioner positions have been created. One deputy will oversee the ambulance service and a range of other functions, while the other will oversee the fire brigade, the rural fire service and the SES, together with some other functions.
The opposition, rather mischievously and, I would argue, downright deliberately, puts it about that this introduces another layer of bureaucracy between emergency officers and the minister. This assertion is simply untrue. A deputy commissioner will be, in effect, the chief officer for one or more of the services and, with the commissioner, will have direct access to the minister. The commissioner has direct and immediate access to me on operational matters. When I put that to Mr Pratt in our radio interview last week, he had to acknowledge that the commissioner does indeed have unfettered access to the minister. The reason he had to do that is that the facts speak for themselves.
I have met with the commissioner on at least 15 occasions since about the middle of last year—more than twice a month, on average. In addition to that, I have had regular meetings with chief officers over that period on at least three or four individual occasions each. It is simply not tenable, and there is no evidence to back it, to claim that the commissioner and the chief officers are unable to meet with me as the minister and put matters directly to me.
As I have said in question time and as I have said in other forums, there are other mechanisms also in place to ensure that the operational chiefs of our emergency services can report directly to the minister and advise the minister directly on a range of matters. For example, I have put in place new governance arrangements and have established the ESA governance committee. The governance committee meets quarterly and is composed of my chief executive, the commissioner and the four chief officers. It is a formal and direct opportunity every quarter for the heads of the four services and the commissioner to put to me directly their views, concerns, needs and requirements. It is an effective forum. It has met once already and a second meeting will be convened shortly. So to suggest that the minister is not getting the advice he needs is simply untrue, and to suggest that the commissioner and the chief officers are unable to meet with me and are stifled by bureaucracy is also untrue.
I would like to add to this by reflecting on the role of the bushfire council. When I became minister, I made a formal reference to the bushfire council asking them to report to me every year before the commencement of the bushfire season on bushfire preparedness, capacity and response so that they, as the independent experts, appointed by the government and with independence to express their views directly to
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