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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-06-07 Daily Xml
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Metropolitan Fire Service

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:34): A supplementary: of the 18 firefighters who graduated, can the minister advise the house how many were women?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (15:34): I thank the honourable member for his question. From recollection, I understand that all 18 graduates were men. That is something that did not go by unnoticed by the Chief of the Metropolitan Fire Service or me.

I have spoken to Chief Crossman on more than one occasion about the commitment of the MFS to diversity within their workforce and I understand that the chief of the MFS is committed to ensuring that there is female representation within the Metropolitan Fire Service. I understand that the chief is undertaking efforts at the moment to ensure that, going forward, the Metropolitan Fire Service does contain a diversity of background and a diversity of gender.

We know that when it comes to serving our community, the South Australian public is always better served when they have emergency services that reflect the community they are serving. There is a great example of that being undertaken at the moment within the South Australian police force. As a government, we are wholeheartedly behind the police commissioner, Grant Stevens, and his effort to increase the level of female representation within the South Australian police force.

When you look around the globe and you see examples of where communities are becoming dissatisfied and have a lack of confidence in their emergency services, often it is because those services don't reflect the communities they are serving. We want to be a government that stands behind our chiefs, whether they be the police commissioner or the chiefs of our emergency services, to ensure that they have the policies in place to ensure that there is diversity, not just within gender but also within multicultural backgrounds and the like, within our emergency services. I am confident that the MFS is committed to achieving this and to putting in place efforts to ensure that this can occur into the future.

I have to say that the ceremony last week was a significant event. There were a lot of people there and, indeed, a lot of families. You could see how proud those families were of the achievements of their sons. I say this as the father of a 13-month-old daughter: we want to make sure that, whether you are male or female, you have an equal opportunity to be able to get into a career like the MFS, which is an utterly outstanding place to work. They serve our community well and we want to make sure that they continue to do that by having a diversity of backgrounds within their workforce.

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