Grievance Debate

Onkaparinga SES

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:10): John Hill, as health minister in this place, said in 2011 that the public of South Australia expected him to deliver the very best public health system he could in his role as minister. He also went on to say that the buck stops with him. What do we hear from then governor Kevin Scarce at Proclamation Day down in my electorate a couple of years ago? 'There is no ministerial accountability.' That is what we are seeing from this government; there is no ministerial accountability.

I am not going to focus on the Minister for Health; he had his moment of shame today, and it will continue if he keeps going the way he is going. I want to talk about another minister who apparently still has his L-plate on, but who, unfortunately for me, resides in the other place. I want to talk about the new Minister for Emergency Services.

I must say, if his advisers are listening, he should have invited the local member (and possibly even the shadow minister) to the opening of the Kingscote SES on Kangaroo Island on Saturday, but failed to do so. More importantly, can I just get him to come back and perhaps correct his answer in the other place. On Tuesday, he was asked about some of the issues that are going on in the Onkaparinga SES. In his answer, he said that, 'All services that the Onkaparinga SES were undertaking are now being undertaken by other units,' and that those services will be maintained in the southern suburbs.

Let me tell the minister, the Onkaparinga SES is not in the southern suburbs; it is at Lobethal. He needs to know a bit more about his portfolio if he is going to stand up and make these announcements in the other place and take his money as a minister. He needs to be aware of the accountability that there is going to be as a minister.

In his emergency services portfolio is responsibility for the Metropolitan Fire Service, the Country Fire Service—and I put on the record I am a life member of the Country Fire Service—and the State Emergency Service. They work very well together and have for many years. In 2007, a lot of the barriers and rules were thrown out, and an MoU was signed by Grant Lupton (then chief officer of the MFS), Euan Ferguson (then chief officer of the CFS) and David Place (then chief officer of the SES) which said:

Response of Emergency Services to emergency incidents will be based on the principle that the nearest and fastest appropriate resource will be responded.

Well, that is not happening. What is happening in the Onkaparinga SES response area is that there have been times when the triaging and prioritising of calls has been all over the place. There needs to be some significant improvement, because there is a significant degree of volunteer fatigue and frustration in dispatching SES responses to incidents that could be handled by the nearest, most appropriate and fastest resource.

The degree of angst has come to the point where the signatures of 42 members of the Onkaparinga SES were attached to a letter to the Minister for Emergency Services, which I hand-delivered to the other place on Tuesday. Those 42 signatures add up to 545 years of SES experience. Let me just quickly read from that letter to the minister:

We understand by now you are well aware of the increasing concerns and issues within the Onkaparinga SES unit and have had numerous briefings and assurances from SES Management.

After much frustration and deliberation, we decided to make the tough decision to ask the SES Chief Officer to disband the Onkaparinga SES Unit. A special meeting was held on 7^th March 2016, when the vote was unanimous and subsequent phone calls to absent members also endorsed the vote.

Our unit has enjoyed great strength in unity and a strong membership for many years; however, this has progressively been eroded by the constant frustrations and road blocks that the membership have been enduring. There are significant unresolved issues that present an unacceptable level of risk to both life and property to the public of South Australia and to volunteers.

The unit was not willing to ignore these concerns and system flaws or wait for a fatality or significant property loss to force change.

We understand you may be reluctant to intervene as this may be seen as an operational matter between the Onkaparinga unit and SES management. Whilst certain aspects may indeed be operational, of far greater concern are matters relating to public safety, fatigue, morale and interruption to volunteer work life and employment balance.

Despite exhaustive discussions and continued examples provided to SES management of unacceptable and avoidable risk to the public and unnecessary duplication of resources we have been unable to resolve this matter internally hence our appeal to meet with you in person.

Time expired.