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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
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Emergency Services Workers

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (14:47): Supplementary: will the Treasurer provide for the council and, indeed, for the benefit of those volunteer associations and their members, the correspondence sent to SAFECOM ruling out this proposal?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:47): No. What I will do is that when the decision is finally taken I hope that it will be something which is satisfactory to the volunteers, and I am led to believe that that is likely to be the case. I would hope that a satisfactory resolution to the issue is what the volunteers should be happy with. As I indicated, the decision-making process that occurred, or what occurred in the last few days of December last year, was an exchange of emails between Treasury officers and SAFECOM officers which indicated, 'Here's how we would actually change the communiqué,' and the words to which the honourable member has referred were proposed to be changed in an exchange of emails.

Those officers do not have the authority to make decisions. They are, nevertheless, the ones who are doing the work and they refer it to the SAFECOM board and it eventually comes to me as Treasurer. So there are processes to make a decision but in relation to having heard the criticism and making recommended changes to the wording, in particular to the words to which the honourable member has referred, there was an exchange of emails, I am advised, at the end of December.

As I said, I am sure, from my discussions with volunteers, all they are going to be interested in is: is there a satisfactory resolution and, for the first time, will this government provide the additional benefits and entitlements that the former Labor government didn't provide? In the end, if that's a satisfactory resolution my experience with volunteers is that they will welcome that warmly; however, the process may well have eventuated over the last few weeks.

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