Page 3638 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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I am not sure that adds any clarity at all. The commissioner can rightly now say that according to 8A(3), if it gets up, he was simply coordinating by directing units to do certain things. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of the amendment.
I think what we are doing is putting in place less certainty about how operations will actually work. If there is uncertainty about how operations will work that will lead to, I believe, confusion. The potential is there. Of course that will put safety at risk on the emergency ground, whatever sort of emergency it is.
We are yet to really hear the case why this is required. That something went wrong at a desk exercise and suddenly led to these changes seems to me to be an overreaction to something that has functioned reasonably well and something that I believe should be left alone. And when you have got key organisations like the United Firefighters Union saying they have concerns, when you have got key organisations like the Volunteer Brigades Association saying they have concerns, then this amendment should not be passed today. That is the problem that we are facing here today.
I think it also behoves the minister to explain what really happened. It is interesting that the minister already had an answer, when we asked the first question about whether or not there were directions, that no, there were not. Obviously there is some concern from people I speak to, insiders, who say there are serious concerns about this amendment.
What it really does is concentrate more power in the commissioner’s hands. I would be interested in the minister’s explanation how it does not, because it is taking something that is explicit and doing away with it. Indeed, in the existing clause 8A(3) some people have said to me that the “may” should be amended to a “shall” to make it even stronger so that we do have that delineation between the role of the commissioner who is running the entire emergency services and the role of the chief officer to undertake the job that they are tasked with under the act, to run the particular service, whether it is Fire & Rescue, the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service or the ACT Ambulance Service.
It will be interesting to hear the minister’s explanation how this makes it better, how it makes it far clearer and what protections are there for the officers on the ground to be able to get on with their job, without interference. That is the nub of what I would like answered today.
I am reasonably happy with 8A(3) as it stands. I think it is clear. If the whole clause disappears then of course that clarity goes. Then I think you could easily interpret the replacement clause that the minister is proposing, which will become 8A(2), in this way: “For the effective coordination of the emergency the commissioner may direct a chief officer to undertake response or recovery.” It does not say in this clause that he cannot tell them how to do that.
When 8A(3) disappears, that limit on the commissioner disappears also. If that is the intention of the minister, then that is fine; just stand up and say that is the intention, the commissioner should be able to go down to a lower level and direct the chiefs how
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