Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation (Firefighters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 22 May 2014.)

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (10:49): I rise today to speak to the Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation (Firefighters) Amendment Bill. I think this is a very important bill. It is about seeking equity for Country Fire Service volunteers, and I know there are members of the Country Fire Service on this side of the house as well as the other side.

What we have seen with the recent workers compensation arrangements in regard to certain types of cancer is that Metropolitan Fire Service firefighters and retained Metropolitan Fire Service firefighters do not have to prove how many events they have attended in their service. Once they go through a qualifying period, depending on the type of cancer that they may pick up, they qualify and are eligible for compensation under the compensation scheme. I think that is a good thing. I think that is a great thing, because our firefighters, whether they are from the MFS, CFS or, quite frankly, just farmers who turn up with their fire units and are not a member of either, all do a great thing for this state.

I think people need to be recognised for the health concerns that they encounter, whether it be out in the field, a shed fire, an industrial fire with poisonous fumes and obviously the effects of potential asbestos contamination from fighting fires. It still beggars belief as to why Country Fire Service volunteers are not recognised in the same way by this government. The member for Brock, the regional development—

An honourable member: Frome.

Mr PEDERICK: The member for Frome, sorry. The member for Brock—he is not dead, is he? No. You usually only get a seat named after you after you die, I think.

Members interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Thank you to my friends on this side. I get confused with the 'Brockument' and everything, but anyway. The member for Frome, who was a strong supporter prior to the recent state election, of the CFS volunteers and that they should get the equivalent compensation of Metropolitan Fire Service members, seems to have gone to water on this issue since. He was going to chair a committee but, no, now the government have set up their own committee to look into this. Quite frankly, I think it is a pretty easy thing to fix. I think the government should give absolute equity to the many thousands of CFS volunteers across this state.

The government has made it such that the onus of proof has to come back to the CFS volunteer, that they have attended 175 incidents over five years. What the government has forgotten in this whole debate is that many incidents that the CFS attend are not bushfires, building fires or structural fires. I have many CFS volunteers in my electorate, from Coomandook, which merged with what was the CFS brigade at Ki Ki, Cooke Plains, Tailem Bend, Murray Bridge, Langhorne Creek, Milang, Currency Creek, Clayton Bay, Goolwa and Finniss, and I certainly have members in my electorate who are in the Rockleigh and Coonalpyn brigades as well.

Especially on the Dukes Highway, the brigades down there from Tailem Bend, Coomandook and Coonalpyn have to attend many horrifying scenes and many accidents that result in terrible injury and quite often death. One of my friends who serves on the Coonalpyn brigade, which is a brigade that is a specified road crash accident brigade, has said, 'Look, I've just got to have some time off from the CFS. I've just got to get my head right.' This is coming from someone who volunteers their time, because what they see out there on the road are terrible things: dismembered bodies, people dying in front of them or people already deceased because they have had a terrible accident.

Occasionally there are head-on accidents on the Dukes Highway and terrible outcomes as a result. It is not just there, it is right throughout my electorate and right throughout the state, throughout the Fleurieu Peninsula where a lot of the roads need upgrading, and the brigades through Goolwa, Clayton Bay, Finniss, Milang and Langhorne Creek, very sadly, have to deal with these accidents all the time. It is a huge thing to put on people and, as I said, sometimes people just need some time out to have a break from the service. These people do fantastic service for our community.

I had a fire from a lightning strike on my property in the last 18 months or so when I was on Kangaroo Island with the Hon. John Dawkins and the member for Finniss. You can imagine, I am trying to manage a fire on my property from Kangaroo Island where it looked all fine, but obviously there were hundreds of lightning strikes throughout the South-East. The CFS were absolutely flat out that day. They were fighting fires towards Meningie, right down through the South-East and through to Naracoorte because of the hundreds of lightning strikes around the place. It was great that everyone could coordinate what other resources we had in farm fire units to back up the service of the CFS to put out all of these spot fires. I am certainly very grateful of the CFS that day and my neighbours who helped extinguish those fires.

Not enough recognition is given to the volunteers. They save the government hundreds of millions of dollars annually because it does not have to pay for these people to do their training or to go to their meetings. They give up their valuable time so that they can do this valuable work. They are saving money not just for the government but for insurance companies, and also ensuring the wellbeing of the citizens of this state. I think it is a very small price to pay to give them the eligibility to qualify for cancer compensation.

There are various arguments about how much money that could be. It is a bit like the workers compensation argument that we get in here all the time and the fund, I understand, of the unfunded liabilities is well over a billion dollars. We get different amounts brought to us here about what the fund could be but, as I said, I think that would be a very small price to pay for the massive and diligent service that these volunteers give.

I want to reflect on the area of Rockleigh. I represent a part of that area, the member for Schubert represents part of it, and the member for Kavel represents part of it. Finally, they are going to get a new fire station there. They have had their fire truck housed in a farmer's property and they use his shearing shed for training. I commend Don Moore and his group there for taking the initiative to house the truck so that they can look after the many fires. There were about four in the last 18 months to two years that have gone through Rockleigh and caused major devastation.

I think the government needs to wake up and recognise what a valuable resource they have in the Country Fire Service. I am a member. Sadly, not that I want to go attending many fires, I do not get the opportunity as I am not there a lot of the time to assist my colleagues with fighting fires, but I certainly commend all the CFS firefighters of this state not only for the work they do in fighting fires but the vehicle accident work they have to attend and the rescues. It is just such great service. They do not want pay. They do not want to be paid as firefighters, they just want some acknowledgment that their service is treated as fine service by this state, and I think that is all they can ask for.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (10:59): I am extremely seriously and passionately behind the member for Morphett on this issue. This is incredibly important and very close to my heart, and I commend speakers on this side, my colleagues, who are also just as serious about this issue. I also commend the Hon. Tammy Franks from the other place for pushing this issue over there. I think that it speaks volumes about her for doing that.

I also know that many of the members opposite feel very seriously about this issue as well, and I encourage them to do everything they can within their team to change the government's position on this. I can only imagine what the Labor Party would be saying if the roles were reversed and the Liberal Party was doing what the Labor Party is doing right now. I thank those people opposite who are working with their consciences and their hearts on this issue, and I hope that they are successful in convincing the rest of their government colleagues on this very important issue.

The reality is that the exposure to health risks for professionals and volunteers is exactly the same. I can tell you that in my electorate, and all over country South Australia, where there are MFS and CFS brigades they go to the same incidents and they do the same work. Sometimes, the CFS people have less equipment and so are potentially exposed to greater risks. In other parts of the electorate where there is only CFS and no MFS, the CFS to do the work that the MFS would do if they were there. So, they are at the very least exposed to the same risks, and quite probably exposed to more.

I will read a brief excerpt from an article which was given to me just this morning by Scott Kennedy, a very capable Liberal staff member, and it comes from the Autumn 2014 edition of Fire Australia magazine. I will not read through it all, but I commend the article to people. The short bit I will read out is:

It is a hazardous scenario that bushfire firefighters in Australia and overseas face more frequently as population growth pushes residential development into rural areas. At the rural-urban interface, bushfire firefighters are exposed to smoke from not just vegetation, but from combinations of burning houses, cars and other materials. And bushfire firefighters—

So, read 'CFS', rather than 'MFS'—

are less likely than city firefighters to be wearing breathing apparatus. This means they may be more vulnerable to health risks posed by burning organic compounds that have been, until now, mostly unmeasured.

There is much more in that article, and I do commend it to the people making decisions within the government to consider this, because it is a very important issue. It is important to point out that this is about access. I understand what the government says: if a CFS volunteer firefighter ended up being sick, and if that person wanted to claim support for a medical condition, potentially that person could get it—but they would have to fight for it. This is about the onus of proof: the professionals get it automatically; the volunteers have to fight for it. That is the heart of the problem here, and that is completely inexcusable.

It would not happen in any other workplace. I cannot imagine that any member of parliament, regardless of which party they come from, would have a work experience person in their electorate office and give them different workplace conditions and expect that if they somehow contracted an illness, or happened to be injured or something like that, there was a difference between that work experience person and one of their paid staff.

I cannot imagine that anybody in this house would say that volunteers in schools, whether they were providing special activities, coaching sport, or working in a canteen as volunteers, should have a different level of workplace health and safety cover than the paid staff who worked there. I cannot imagine that people would think that anybody working for a charitable organisation, whether they be paid or volunteer staff, should have different access to safety cover, to health cover or to basic workplace safety in the workplace, whether they are paid or not paid.

Volunteers in tourism and visitor information centres, Families SA volunteers who drive cars to ferry people around the city and the state as volunteers—I cannot imagine that the government would say that those people would be entitled to a less safe workplace because they had a lower level of entitlement than the paid Families SA volunteers if they happen to be doing the same work. It is completely inexcusable.

There is precedent everywhere we look, and particularly in public servants, as MFS professionals are, and as many very good people across this state are, to say that there should be exactly the same access to workplace health and safety support if it is required. It is inexcusable for the government to say, 'But when it comes to firefighters, we think that's different.' Let me say, I am not trying to take anything away from the MFS. Good luck to them. They have recently received extra support, and I think that is fantastic.

The volunteers deserve exactly the same because the principle is set throughout our state. They deserve exactly the same because the risks they face are exactly the same and quite possibly even greater. For the government to say that we cannot afford it is disgraceful, and that is what the government is saying, 'We have decided to give it to the paid MFS firefighters, but we cannot give it to the volunteers because we can't afford it.' That is a disgraceful precedent that they are trying to set.

This is a principle about the cover that is there, and I understand the realities of budgets and I understand the realities that you cannot pay for more than you can actually afford to pay for. It should not be, 'We will give complete full cover to one group and no cover to another, or not give the same access to the same cover to a different group.' It should actually be that you start with the principle and then figure out what you can afford; do not start with what you can afford and then try to create a principle that works to your budget. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong.

I think it is a dreadful shame for the government to say that we can afford it for the professionals but we cannot afford it for the volunteers. The professionals deserve it and the volunteers deserve it as well. I would not be at all surprised if all of those other types of workplaces I mentioned—whether it be MPs' offices, schools, charitable organisations, visitor information centres or Families SA, and there are probably dozens of other examples people here could consider—decided to stick up for their colleagues, for volunteers, who go out of their way, as many members on this side have said, and put themselves at very serious risk.

I can say that I have done it and I am just one person. I go to a few CFS callouts a year because I am barely home. If I am home and the pager goes off, I go out, but I am not home that often so I go to probably four CFS callouts a year. I know firsthand the risks that people put themselves through and I know firsthand the people who do it much more frequently than I do. There is a core group of people in the Wilmington CFS, probably 10 or a dozen or so, who would be available for almost every callout.

This is not about me. As far as I know I am very fit and healthy and do not expect to ever benefit from what I am pushing for, but there are probably 5,000 to 8,000 people out there out of the 13,000-odd CFS volunteers who would do callouts more frequently than I do, and they are the people who deserve this. Government members know in their hearts that what the government is doing here is wrong. It is good that they gave it to the MFS but completely inexcusable that they did not give it to the CFS as well.

The last thing I would like to say is to make a genuine plea to the member for Frome, who understands this issue very well. For the previous four years in parliament we discussed many CFS and emergency services issues together. He understands this issue and before the last election he was in lock step with us on this issue of principle. I call on him not to change his principle. He said that if he joined the Labor government he would not change his principles on regional development. He said that if he joined the Labor government he would not change his principles in the way he represents the people of Frome. I call on him not to change his principles on the way he wants to stick up for CFS volunteers throughout his electorate and throughout this state.

There are approximately 30 CFS brigades within my electorate alone. There are 13,000 CFS volunteers throughout the state. We support them. The member for Frome said he would support them, and I call on him to do so.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:09): I wholeheartedly support the bill introduced by the member for Morphett. We have spoken on this before in this place. I applaud the efforts of the Hon. Tammy Franks in another place as well. It is just unfortunate that those on the other side have not really woken up to the fact that we have two classes of firefighters in this state: we have paid firefighters and we have volunteer firefighters who do similar work. Some are afforded the privilege of compensation for cancer and suchlike, whereas the poor old volunteers are defecated on from a large height by an out-of-touch government, quite frankly.

I know there are members on the other side, as well as some in another place, who support the efforts of this side of the house. It is once again a sad indictment on where South Australia is that we have this ludicrous situation where some can have and some cannot have.

Mr Goldsworthy: Marty will change all that because he's going to give a free vote.

Mr PENGILLY: Thank you. I would like to pick up on the comments by the member for Stuart. When I was chairman of the former CFS board we had 18,000 volunteers. They have drifted off for various reasons, some have gone. Country areas have struggled to maintain populations, and that has impacted heavily on volunteers in all sorts of areas but very much so in the CFS. I know that my brigade on the island, the Wisanger brigade, struggles to keep going. We have people on the roster who are in their 60s. It is hard to keep the enthusiasm there; however, we keep the brigade going because we need it for our immediate area. That is why we keep it going. In country areas, by and large, if there is a fire all one wants to do is get on the truck, go and put the fire out and go home and not put up with the rest of the nonsense.

I have my membership certificate up in my office. I joined up in 1968, when I first became an EFS member, like perhaps the member for MacKillop, who is probably also a member of the EFS. Fred Kerr was the head serang and I was very fortunate in the 1990s to be given the position on the board of presiding member. The volunteers were always at the forefront of our deliberations, to the extent that I had somewhat of a fallout with the minister at the time, Mr Brokenshire from another place. Mr Brokenshire, acting under the instructions of his boss at that time, slotted me, quite frankly. However, that is another story; that is history and we have moved on from that.

Mr Griffiths: Did you deserve it?

Mr PENGILLY: No, I didn't. The problem was that I would not do what he wanted. That occurred at Maitland actually. That is history. The member for Morphett has done the right thing in giving the house the opportunity to debate this bill. Picking up on what the member for Stuart said a few minutes ago, it is incumbent, in my view, on the member for Frome, now that he is a minister in the Labor government, to not forget what he said, where he came from and where his roots are and to return to supporting a bill such as this.

Also, can I say to the member for Waite—who is not in the chamber and who cannot look across the chamber at us, I might add—that he also has a responsibility because he backed this thing to the hilt; he absolutely backed it to the hilt before doing a quisling. It is incumbent on him to support this motion, otherwise it shows him up to be not worth consideration on questions of integrity on what they have done in the past and what they may do now. Not that I want to put any pressure on him, I might add. However, it is important that this motion gets through the house.

There are many in this place who have CFS brigades in their electorates and I know there are members on the other side who have CFS and SES brigades in their electorates. It is important that they actually stand up for something instead of picking up all the trappings of government and getting paid additional money for all sorts of jobs, that they recognise that they have constituents to support and that many of those are volunteers. So, I say to members on the other side: for heaven's sake, for once in your lives get real about it and support this motion of the member for Morphett. It is not going to go away.

Over the years, I know myself—I am not going to speak for others, they can speak for themselves—I have attended numerous incidents where people have been severely injured, where people have been burnt, where one person was burnt alive and we got him out with a rake the next day. I mean, that is pretty macabre but that is what we did, and it was not a very pleasant experience. I think I was 18 at that stage, or I might have even been a little bit younger, when I first joined.

I have gone to all sorts of incredible fires. I guess the real major fire that I was involved in, apart from a number of little ones, was the 2007 fires which burnt out a third of Kangaroo Island, much of which did not need to burn if the Department of Environment was not such a mob of incompetent clots and had done some decent burning at the appropriate time, instead of having the whole lot go in a major conflagration because they are out of touch with reality.

Various ministers of the environment and the environment department put out press releases on how much burning they are doing, which pales into insignificance given the amount of land they have. If you get the figures which I had supplied to me a week or two ago on what they intended to do and what they actually did do over the spring, summer and autumn period that we have just gone through, they have failed dismally. They do not have the guts, they do not have the experience, they do not want to ask people who are experienced in burning bush because they have university degrees which say that they know better than us.

I hope that the member for Morphett's motion gets support from both sides of the house. I believe, without question, that the upper house will have a different attitude entirely and that is a good thing. It is not often that the Hon. Tammy Franks and I agree on much, but we agree on this one.

Mr Griffiths interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: That and chooks. So, with those few words I wholeheartedly support the motion and look forward to it passing the house.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:18): Sorry, member for Kavel.

Mr Griffiths: There's an order.

Mr KNOLL: There is an order. There is a structure. The whip does a fantastic job. I rise today to speak about this amendment and to support the inclusion and acknowledge the good work of the CFS. It is said that we must accept fire as a part of life, of living in Australia, but we of the country do not face the front line alone. Bushfires are not restricted to my electorate. The devastation it causes is felt by many electorates but none so much as those in the country.

During the fire season over the past summer there was a great amount of media coverage of the extent of the fires across the state. There are many community-minded people who are members of the CFS. Indeed, there are more than 13,500 volunteers, including cadets, who are strongly committed to protecting their communities across the state. Those 13,500 are across 425 brigades, with a fleet of more than 850 fire trucks.

The people who commit themselves to the CFS do not do so lightly, nor without support. CFS training is hard but necessary. I support this amendment because, like the member for Morphett said at a previous time in this place, it includes three simple letters: CFS. Only this past summer the largest fire in the state, the Bangor fire, was just outside my electorate; indeed, in the electorate of Stuart just to the north. However my community was not untouched. On 17 January a fire ignited in the Eden Valley.

A couple of days previous to that fire there was a small file on the hill at Krondorf, which is only a couple of kilometres from my house. I was in Adelaide that day, and came home to see the smoke coming across the valley floor. We saw the fire put out in pretty quick time; the local crews were onto it and dealt with it in an efficient and professional manner, and provided safety to approximately 5,000 residents, I think it is, within a couple of kilometres of that fire.

The fire that started at Eden Valley became a lot more serious and a lot more dangerous. In fact, the Krondorf fire was probably a good wake-up call to the locals that the fire season was definitely on us and that we needed to maintain our vigilance. Over those days of the Eden Valley fire, the response from the community—the CFS primarily, but the rest of the community that got involved, from service clubs to the Red Cross, to all the other support agencies, to my local Barossa farmers' market providing a kitchen to give food support for the CFS volunteers and affected people in those areas the fire touched—was inspiring, and it was amazing and it was extraordinary.

I talked to people along Jutland Road who were very close to the fire. They lost all lines of communication and were stuck there amongst the haze through the night, not knowing which way the fire might go. In fact, at one point the fire advice from the CFS warned towns in all four directions around the fire, suggesting that the winds were changing quite often and that no-one in close proximity to the fire was safe. I also point out that it was extremely difficult terrain. We are talking about rocky outcrops and quite hilly country, and it was an extremely difficult situation in which our CFS found themselves.

I was talking to someone who is just this side of Keyneton whose husband was with a farm fire unit on the front line. She did not know where he was or how he was until she got a phone call from him saying 'Look, I think you need to pack up the house and get out.' She said 'Unfortunately it's too late. The kids have already come up from Adelaide. We're here on the farm and we're protected. We've done everything we can and we are going to sit in.' She said it was the scariest thing she has experienced in the last 20 years, because she had no idea if her husband was safe and, in her words, 'he went out with a flannelette and a pair of thongs' as opposed to having on all the safety gear. Having the entire family there waiting with that level of uncertainty was quite scary.

The community response after the fire was, again, amazing. I know of a friend who lives just off Jutland Road out past Keyneton, and he said that people would come and offer food and support, and would call up and check if they were okay once, after about a week and a half, the communications lines were restored. He told me the story of how the fire came over the hill towards his property. It is lucky that he had an old dry stone wall that stopped the fire from coming further, but what happened was that a fire truck rocked up—I cannot remember if it was Kangarilla or Yankalilla or—

Dr McFetridge: Kangarilla.

Mr KNOLL: Kangarilla. It rocked up in front of his house and monitored the fire and then just stood there. They sat there and waited—his property is the only property in the vicinity—and waited until the fire had passed to make sure that everything was safe and then they moved on. He said he did not ask them to come but they came, looked after him, and then they left, without a word of thanks or a word of encouragement or anything.

The reason I bring up these stories is because throughout the days, weeks and months since the fire not one person has ever come to me questioning the hard work and dedication of the members of the CFS; not one. No-one has suggested to me that they are anything other than a professional, organised group who have the absolute care of their community first and foremost in their mind. They are a group of people who, as one of their stated policies, do not want to be paid, and, as a state government that has a budget that is constrained, I think members opposite should really be quite grateful for that fact; they do not want to be paid.

Once again, for me it is another example of regional communities banding together to look after themselves. Yes, they certainly do ask for support from government in terms of equipment and training but they are there primarily volunteering their time. As a member from a rural electorate nothing could make me prouder because the CFS is an organisation that can stand up and say, 'We are here for the community. We are here to devote our time and we are prepared to do it to make our community better.' As a state government we should applaud them and we should do everything we can to support them and, indeed, give them equality.

The success of the CFS is that in the early stages of the fire there were 371 homes that were seen to be in the line of fire. Despite their best efforts, and I would say because of their best efforts only four houses were lost: four houses out of 371 in the line of fire. Even though it was unfortunate and devastating for those who lost their homes overall it was a great result for the community.

Without the service of these community-minded men and women who, at times, risk their lives to defend their communities, the government would be a whole lot more out of pocket. I would contend that those who face the same risks deserve the same cover. I have heard members opposite talk often of equality and they preach equality on so many levels, yet it seems that their commitment to equality has wavered on this issue. As a member from a regional community sitting on this side of the house I am here to call them out on it.

The CFS is a great community organisation; it is a community in itself. In extreme and exceptional circumstances crews can be flown across the country to help fellow volunteers defeat fires. This debate should not pit paid firefighters against those who volunteer for the same purpose; it should not pit those who are paid against those who volunteer to defend their communities. More often than not they work together. In my community it tends to be more often than not that the CFS gets there before the local MFS crews do. These guys travel to crash sites and are there first and they see horrific accidents and they need to be treated as well as those in the MFS.

This debate is about a fair go. Again, another catchcry of those opposite. This debate is about a fair go. On this side of the house we are here to stand up for a fair go for the CFS volunteers. In closing, may I say that the volunteers face the same danger, they face the same stress, and the MFS and CFS always complement each other. I say that they should be treated exactly the same, and that is why I urge this house to support this fantastic amendment.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (11:27): I am certainly aware of the short amount of time I have before the clock gets to 11.30 and we move on to other matters so I will seek leave to continue my remarks. Whenever an issue comes before the house in relation to our CFS volunteers or bushfire- related matters, I always think it is important for members such as myself to stand up and make some comments. I am one of the members in this place who represents probably one of the highest fire risk regions not only in the state, not only in Australia but actually on the planet. It is well known that the Adelaide Hills region is an extremely high fire risk area.

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: Kavel is the centre of the universe!

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: I am glad the member for Stuart recognises that! I will pick him up on that so that it goes into Hansard: that Kavel is the centre of the universe. He is right. All of us in this place support our CFS volunteers and we know what a crucial and essential role they play in each and every one of our communities. There is a CFS brigade in every one of the towns in my electorate. There are smaller villages and hamlets that do not necessarily have a CFS brigade but right from the north up in Gumeracha/Birdwood, in the north of the electorate down to Mount Barker and out to Callington and Monarto and everywhere in between there is a CFS brigade. As previous speakers have said, they are committed members of our community. As the member for Schubert stated in his contribution, they are committed volunteers within our community endeavouring to make our places safe and secure. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.