VFBV

A Note For Members: Law firm blog about CFA changes
Tuesday April 11th 2017

You may become aware of a legal blog article, published a few days ago by Philip Gardner a partner with law firm Ryan Carlisle Thomas Lawyers, and circulating on social media.  The article is promoting a restructure of Victorian fire service boundaries and a carve up of CFA. 

Philip Gardner and Ryan Carlisle Thomas lawyers have been engaged by the UFU at various times and acted for the UFU in seeking to block VFBV from being allowed to assist the Fair Work Commission (FWC) a year or so ago when we sought to assist the FWC to understand volunteer concerns with the proposed EBA prior to the events, sackings, Supreme Court action and Fair Work Act amendment that followed over the past year.

Ironically, the author as a lawyer has paid no heed to the CFA or Emergency Management Acts, let alone the high functioning capacity of our emergency management arrangements regardless of the ongoing UFU campaign.

The author ignores the facts that:

• CFA is a successful world renowned volunteer based integrated fire service operating in suburban, regional and rural Victoria (hasn’t been anything like the blogs description of CFA as being only a rural based service fire service for generations and has always had urban and rural components);
  
  
• a small number of paid operational staff including firefighters have been a successful feature of CFA and its predecessors going back to the 19th century;
  
  
• Victoria’s emergency management capacity to deal with fire, floods and other disasters across the state (and often simultaneous emergency events in different parts of the State) is based on the surge capacity inherent in our volunteer system, particularly from the large number of urban volunteers who have sufficient numbers to provide local response capacity and at the same time surge capacity to multiple events across the state for days, weeks and sometimes months – pushing out volunteers from urban areas using boundary changes would be truly disastrous for Victoria;
  
  
• Victoria’s emergency management capability cannot exist without the huge numbers of trained and experienced volunteers, which can supply trained, qualified and experienced firefighters (for local service delivery and around the state as needed) for weeks and even months if necessary and to multiple concurrent emergencies because of the very large numbers;
  
  
• there will be enormous cost to the community if the existing urban volunteer brigades in suburban Melbourne and major regional cities were to be pushed aside and replaced by additional paid firefighters;
  
  
• the UFU, Premier Daniel Andrews and Minister James Merlino have made repeated claims that the proposed EBA has no effect on volunteers and if these statements are true the Fair Work Act amendments have no application.  The Fair Work Act amendments only apply if EBA clauses interfere with an emergency organisations (such as CFA), legitimate work of:
  
  
  • engaging and deploying its volunteers;
  • providing support and equipment to its volunteers;
  • managing its relationship or work with any recognised emergency in relation to volunteers;
  • managing its operations in relation to those volunteers;
  • being able to consult, make decisions and take action regarding the above;
  • recognising, valuing, respecting and promoting the contribution of its volunteers; and
  • complying with the State laws such as the CFA Act
    
    
• the Fair Work Act amendments do not prohibit CFA management from making decisions about minimum staffing. The author forgets to mention that he is not even recognising volunteers as a legitimate part of crewing numbers;
  
  
• the Fair Work Act amendments have not caused any disruption to CFA’s management of its paid firefighters and the amendments have not even been tested because the UFU has resisted CFA attempts to have the proposed EBA considered by the Fair Work Commission;
  
  
• the Fair Work Act amendments do not render CFAs management of its employed firefighters unworkable and they are entirely consistent with the current CFA Chief Officers view (as presented to the Senate Inquiry into the Fair Work Act amendment) that any award or agreement made under the Fair Work Act cannot be allowed to interfere with or detract from his powers and obligations under the CFA Act;
  
  
• the Federal Government’s Fair Work Act amendments do no more than enforce what is in Victoria’s own CFA and Emergency Management Acts as they apply to volunteers which has been repeatedly supported by both Labor and the Coalition in the Victorian Parliament – the Federal amendments simply removed an anomaly whereby the enterprise bargaining arrangements under the Fair Work Act (up until last October’s Federal amendments) could be manipulated to by-pass the state parliament and override the CFA and Emergency Management Acts and the framework they have for the organisation and operation of CFA (and other) volunteers.
   

Having ignored these critically important facts, the article is nothing but pure propaganda (without factual merit) aimed at planting a seed of fear and resentment towards volunteers to further another agenda.  I think it is time that we called this out. It is not about community safety or a benefit to Victoria if it displaces or erodes volunteer capacity. And all this comes at an enormous cost, both in dollars; loss of emergency management capability and capacity; loss of local community capacity and reduced community resilience.