Regional Capability Community Fund

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (15:32): I rise today to talk about the government's Regional Capability Community firefighting fund and the fact that the minister announced with much fanfare that the government was going to support regional firefighting by awarding grants to landowners to achieve a greater firefighting capacity within their own farms.

Just reading the literature around this, the Minister for Emergency Services announced not too long ago that in the first of a four-year program, more than 1,000 applications were received. Sadly from the perspective of my electorate, just 32 grants were awarded to boost front-line emergency services, and I can tell you that I have been contacted by a number of constituents expressing their disappointment.

I must give my congratulations to those who were successful and understand that that will significantly increase their capacity to deal with an emergency—an emergency which could arise any day now given that we have reached the fire danger season. I have one particular email here which I would like to refer to, and it is from a CFS captain, as it happens, within my electorate. That captain applied for a grant through the Regional Capability Community Fund for a farm firefighting unit. This particular gentleman is away a lot during fires, usually taking a farm unit as well as fulfilling his role as a CFS captain.

This gentleman decided that he wanted to leave a new unit at the property for his workers and family to utilise during a fire event. His brother applied for the same. His brother got the grant but this particular gentleman did not and he is unhappy about that. He actually said that he is ready to pull the pin on the whole CFS, which is pretty extreme. I have to say that I too am listed as a CFS volunteer and have been active as a CFS volunteer for most of my adult life. We do not make these suggestions lightly, but this particular fellow spends a lot of time as a volunteer and, as a rural property owner, his emergency services levy charge has increased as well. He simply wants to know why he was refused, given his 28 years of service.

I also received an email from his mother, as it happens. This is just one particular family of a number from whom I have received correspondence, but this young man's mother is concerned about his health. She feels that this rejection is an insult to someone who has given 28 years of his life to firefighting and who, in all those years, has not claimed one cent from the government. Even when he damaged a ute fighting a fire, they paid for their own repairs.

This lady goes on to say that her husband also joined in the early 1980s and was seldom home in fire season. To add insult to injury—and this will strike a chord right across my electorate, the regional areas and even metropolitan South Australia—their emergency services levy has gone up from $146 to nearly $700, which is an extraordinary increase.

What I wish to highlight in this grieve today is not the individual cases of people being rejected, but the fact that the government has offered funding to farmers and landowners to improve their firefighting capacity, yet there seems to be very little in the way of grants coming forward. A very limited number of applications have been awarded. The minister quite rightly says that responding quickly stops a small fire becoming a big fire. Never has a truer word been said, but of course we have to build into our communities the capacity to do that.

There are reduced CFS numbers, and it is not a reflection on the CFS: it is simply a reflection on the number of people who are living in rural areas. There are fewer and fewer people living in our regional areas, often becoming more and more productive but with a reduced capacity to support the emergency services as volunteers. I think the government needs to look closely, despite their rhetoric, at how they are supporting these organisations and these people.