Bills

Fire and Emergency Services (Volunteer Charters) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (10:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Fire and Emergency Services Act 2005. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (10:31): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I first introduced this legislation in November 2012. I remember the day well. It was a day of extreme fire danger. It was a day that reminded us all of the dangers that we face in South Australia from natural disasters, particularly bushfires. Part of recognising the dangers of bushfires and emergencies in South Australia is recognising those thousands and thousands of volunteers who leave their families, and their communities in some cases, and risk their lives doing the job of a CFS or SES volunteer.

This bill will enshrine in legislation the SES and CFS volunteer charters, not in regulation, as the government is proposing to do. The Victorian government has done this and it works exceptionally well. Both the SES Volunteers' Association and the CFS Volunteers Association support this coming into legislation—not regulation—and certainly the volunteers deserve to have it enshrined in legislation.

This bill is a relatively small change, and I will go through the changes to the Fire and Emergency Services Act 2005. I just hope that the government sees the light, particularly after the minister's performance in the last week or so. He really does need to get some brownie points with volunteers.

I should put on the record that I am a life member of the Country Fire Service and a current serving member with the Meadows and Kangarilla brigades, as are the members for Hammond, Stuart, Finniss, MacKillop and Chaffey. I don't think I have missed any others. Scott Kennedy, who is in the whip's office, is a lieutenant in the Norton Summit-Ashton brigade. We do not do it for any particular reason other than to help our communities—

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

Dr McFETRIDGE: The member for Finniss reminds me that he has been in the CFS for 48 years. He must have started when he was three. The need to provide and encourage volunteers for both the CFS and the SES is something that we need to be cognisant of all the time because we cannot afford to allow volunteer numbers to continue to decline, as they unfortunately have. We need to make sure that we have the resources to respond to emergencies, as we saw recently in the Sampson Flat fire.

I will just remind members about the CFS and the SES. The CFS currently has 13,500 professionally trained volunteers. They are serving 434 communities and are based in 434 stations around the state. Some of those may only get two or three call-outs a year, but others are getting hundreds of call-outs. In my time as captain of Happy Valley Country Fire Service, I think that year we had over 300 call-outs working with the MFS at O'Halloran Hill and St Mary's in a very cooperative way.

The CFS volunteers put in over 300,000 hours attending incidents, according to the latest annual report that has been put out. On top of that, there are over 250,000 hours in training, hazard reduction and community advice, all done by volunteers. The CFS volunteers, according to the 2012-13 report, attended over 8,500 incidents, including bushfires, building and vehicle fires, road crash rescue, hazardous material spills, and many more.

The CFS is supported by other government agencies, particularly the MFS. They do work exceptionally well with the MFS and certainly on many occasions, particularly with storm and other related incidents, with the SES. The CFS also work well with SA Water, ForestrySA, and SA Police, plus the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources.

The SES is a smaller organisation, but an extremely vital organisation and has served South Australia very well right across the state, particularly in the metropolitan area with storms and storm-related damage which is when we see them the most. The SES has 1,680 volunteers, according to their latest annual report of 2012-13, 14 flotillas where they are involved in everything from swift water rescue to other water-related rescues and incidents, and they are based in 67 units.

The roles of the volunteers in the CFS and the SES have expanded greatly, the demands on them have expanded greatly, and we need to make sure the volunteers are not only valued, but continue to be motivated by seeing the support that they deserve from all of us in this place and particularly from this government. The best way we can do that in this place is not only through budgets obviously, but through recognising the volunteer charters. The two charters I am talking about here are the South Australian Country Fire Service Volunteer Charter, and the South Australian State Emergency Service Volunteer Charter.

The charters were set up a number of years ago and were relaunched in 2013. Former premier Mike Rann was the premier who launched the initial charters, as I understand. The signatories on the current CFS Volunteer Charter are the Premier; the then Minister for Emergency Services, Michael O'Brien; the now Minister for Emergency Services who was then Minister for Volunteers; Mr Tony Harrison, the chief executive who would come in under that committee's safety directorate launch that was going on at the time; Mr Greg Nettleton, who is the chief officer of the South Australian Country Fire Service; and Mr Roger Flavell, who is the president of the CFS Volunteers' Association. Just to remind the house, this is very strongly supported by the volunteers' association.

The State Emergency Service Volunteer Charter is signed again by Premier Weatherill; the then minister, O'Brien; the then Minister for Volunteers, Minister Piccolo; Mr Harrison, the chief officer of the State Emergency Service; Mr Chris Beattie; and the president of the SES Volunteers' Association, Mr Warren Hicks ESM.

The charters themselves have various obligations in them. They have undertakings by the government of South Australia. I will just read the first paragraph and this is common to both charters:

The Government of South Australia supports and recognises the role that emergency service volunteers play in our community.

I hope they do. I really sincerely hope they do because there are issues going on with the current restructure which I will not talk about now. There are issues going on there and I just ask the government to slow down and rethink some of the things that are going on at the moment because as it says in the first paragraph of the government's obligations under the charter:

The Government of South Australia supports and recognises the role that emergency service volunteers play in our community.

We cannot do without them. It is so important. The charters are vital documents, very significant documents because they express obligations on behalf of the government, the South Australian Fire and Emergency Services Commission, the Country Fire Service and the State Emergency Service. The responsibilities also then overflow into the volunteers in return for having signed this charter. They realise their obligations to do what they can do to make sure these two services are held in the highest repute and that they do whatever they can to serve the people of South Australia in their volunteer capacity.

Those in both the SES and the CFS are highly trained professionals but offer their services as volunteers. We need to recognise them in this charter, and that is what I am asking here: that the small changes to the legislation be supported by this government. The changes are to section 58 of the Fire and Emergency Services Act to insert section 58A, which talks about the parliamentary recognition of the SACFS volunteer charter, and there are a few new subsections. Under section 107, we are inserting 107A, which introduces parliamentary recognition of the SASES volunteer charter.

This is not a complex piece of legislation. It is inserting what the government wants to do in regulation into legislation. It is a common-sense thing to do. It will show that we value our volunteers. It will show the deep respect this place has for our volunteers and the acknowledgment that they need to be recognised not just in regulation, which can be disallowed at any stage if somebody had the mind to (I hope that is not the case) but in that higher level, in legislation.

I put the bill to the house for its consideration, and I hope members will speak to it in this place and recognise the value of volunteers, and I look forward to the strong support of the government and the swift passage of this bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. P. Caica.