VFBV

Dear members,

On Tuesday last week, Labor announced a suite of initiatives, including their deal with the union to allocate an additional 350 paid firefighters to CFA and 100 to MFB. Labor have confirmed to VFBV that this 350 additional paid firefighters is in addition to the 342 they forced into CFA’s EBA. Labor have confirmed that CFA did not request these additional firefighters and they do not have any idea where they are to be allocated but they have said CFA is to employ the 350 within the next 4 years.

Labor have also announced that they will reintroduce the Board of Reference and that they support the union having a say in where, how many and what numbers of paid firefighters are employed by CFA. They did not agree with us that this should be based solely on the determination by the CFA Chief Officer and based on a transparent, evidence and risk based needs analysis.

Last week, confirming they had no plans for where the additional paid firefighters could be located, Labor also confirmed they had not contemplated any specific fire stations capital funding to accommodate these firefighters, suggesting they thought they would be accommodated at existing CFA facilities.

One conclusion is that they genuinely have no idea and they will now need to strip $100 Million out of CFA’s existing budget to buy trucks and build new integrated stations. Another conclusion is that they are going to convert existing integrated stations to fully paid stations, marginalising volunteers and destroying 1000’s of CFA volunteer firefighter surge capacity workforce.

Labor’s policy announcement is a step backwards to the deal making of 5 and 6 years ago. There has been no discussion with CFA, VFBV or volunteers about what is needed to build and strengthen CFA capacity and no discussion about what would be smart in terms of maintaining and building volunteer capacity and strengthening and sustaining CFA’s volunteer based and integrated model.

None of the initiatives announced on Tuesday are designed to have any benefit or support to volunteers. When asked why Labor have turned their backs on volunteers; why they have ignored the fundamental principles of trust and integrity the Shadow Minister Wade Noonan said this was a very important issue for the union.

Be very clear, VFBV supports the provision of additional resources wherever determined by CFA Chief Officer and welcomes the support of additional paid firefighters wherever they are needed.

But a union/industrial driven CFA, designed and aided and abetted by a Labor Government to fulfil UFU’s stated position of creating a “career-based firefighting services to cover the whole of the Melbourne urban area and other major regional centres in Victoria” is something that we cannot stand by and let happen. We know what this means for a volunteer based and fully integrated CFA service model and is a disaster for Victoria’s emergency management capability. It will mean Victoria has no surge capacity for major incidents; it will reduce CFA volunteer numbers by 1000’s and it will kill CFA as we know it today.

For months we have been talking to Labor about what is needed if they are really serious about improving community safety and this includes:

• More resources to support training of volunteers
• Investment in a modern firefighting fleet
• Remove industrial restrictions that are designed to erode volunteer capacity
• Give CFA the flexibility to deploy resources when and where they are needed
• Remove industrial control over how CFA uses its workforce. 
• Ensure CFA’s integrated paid staff and volunteer model can work well 

They have ignored this and didn’t even have the decency to talk with us about their latest announcement.

Labor’s policy is a plan to destroy CFA’s volunteer based and integrated foundations and to reduce CFA volunteer firefighter numbers.

On the issue of Presumptive Legislation, Labor says it will do it; says it will include the 12 cancers but in the fine print says it will effectively discriminate against CFA volunteers. Labor said they could not provide VFBV a commitment that they will not differentiate between volunteers and paid staff in their legislation. They have quoted the Tasmanian model which discriminates against volunteer firefighters exposed to the same risks as their paid counterparts.

They are happy to find $150 million for more paid firefighters even when CFA hasn’t asked for them; even though CFA still has not had the need to deploy 100 of the last 342 but they say their model for Presumptive Legislation for volunteers will need to be restricted because there isn’t enough money. By the way they as we understand it, they haven’t limited the $$ for the paid firefighters Presumptive component. Similar to the Tasmanian approach to discrimination.

Labor have said it will support the unions push to reopen another inquiry into whether Fiskville is safe to use, and the contamination and health impact on employees.  From our conversation with Labor it looks to be nothing more than the unions push to close Fiskville.

CALL TO ACTION

Be very clear - the union will twist our reaction as being opposed to paid firefighters – this is not true.

The reality is that this deal between Labor and the union, and their complete disregard and disrespect for what it means for CFA volunteers, a CFA integrated service model, and actual local community capability, is sinister and the biggest threat to Victoria’s public safety, that we have not seen since Labor Minister Race Matthews tried to amalgamate MFB and CFA many years ago.

In summary can you spread this message as wide as you can.

We need to get our volunteers active so that the community can see the extreme threat that is posed by Labor’s policy announcement.

We need you, and the people you talk to, to activate a community backlash to this announcement now, and when they contemplate how to vote.

Hans van Hamond AFSM
State President

A message from the Board of Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria.

On Tuesday 18^th November, the Labor Party announced a policy that we believe will have grave and disastrous consequences for CFA.

As CFA volunteer firefighters with an average of over 40 years’ service each and as the elected board of the body established in Victorian law to be the voice of CFA volunteers, we feel the need to take this unprecedented action of activating all Victorians to help us stop a policy that has the potential to destroy CFA.

Our concern with the recently announced Labor policy is that it establishes external industrial interference with the CFA Chief Officer’s power to decide where and when and how he uses CFA firefighters.

We are also concerned that Labor’s policy will reduce CFA’s volunteer firefighting force by thousands of volunteers, pushing volunteers out of CFA stations and hundreds of CFA trucks off the road when we need them for major fires such as Black Saturday.

Labor has grossly underestimated the cost and impact of its policy.  Labor’s promise of $150M and an additional 350 paid firefighters actually only provides 70 additional paid firefighters on the ground at any one time under current paid firefighter rostering arrangements, and it will come at the expense of thousands of highly trained and professional volunteer firefighters.

We support and welcome additional paid support and resources for CFA, provided these resources are required and provided that the CFA determines the need, not a union.  Don’t be fooled, the plan announced by Labor is not about improving community safety in Victoria, the detail included in their announcement is about giving the control of CFA to a union.

Labor’s policy announcement includes specific provisions to surrender CFA operational decisions to an external industrial relations panel.

Instead of Labor’s policy, we need a plan that will recruit and train more CFA volunteer firefighters, provide trucks and equipment to combat fires and other incidents, investment in a modern firefighting fleet, give CFA the flexibility to deploy resources when and where they are needed and remove industrial control over how CFA uses its workforce.

Victoria is one of the most fire prone areas in the world and there are predictions of longer, hotter and more severe fire seasons ahead.  If Labor’s policy is allowed to push trained and experienced CFA volunteers out of fire stations across greater metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria will not have the fire fighting force it needs for day to day incidents and certainly will not have the force to deal with major incidents when they occur, such as Black Saturday.

When you vote on Saturday 29^th understand one thing, as some of Victoria’s most senior volunteer firefighters, we believe Labor’s policy for CFA is not good for CFA volunteers, is not good for Victoria and is not good for the future of CFA.
Signed;

All ten members of the VFBV Board. (The attached PDF copy includes all ten signatures)

A Message to the Labor Party

Dear (Labor) Member of Parliament,

This week the Board of Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria have taken the unprecedented step of publishing an open letter to the people of Victoria, to record their strong objection to Labor’s policy announcement of the 18^th November 2014 affecting the CFA.

The Board have not taken this decision lightly, and want you to understand the depth of despair and anger amongst volunteer ranks caused by Labor’s CFA policy - a policy that sweeps aside the role, discounts the work and ignores the rights of unpaid, hard-working and committed volunteers who make up over 97% of CFA’s 62,000 members and staff.

Make no mistake – this policy is a direct attack on CFA as a statutory volunteer based fire and emergency service where volunteers are supported by sufficient paid staff as expertly determined by the Chief Officer and who form a fully integrated workforce to deliver CFA services.

In 2011 Labor, Coalition and Green MPs in the Victorian Parliament unanimously voted to amend the CFA Act to explicitly recognise this long known fact.

Critical aspects of the amendment bill included:

• Statutory recognition of the Authority as a volunteer based organisation in which volunteers are supported by employees in a fully integrated manner ;
  
  
• Statutory recognition and acceptance of the Volunteer Charter which requires amongst other things that the Government and the Authority commits to meaningful consultation with the VFBV on behalf of CFA volunteers on any matter that might reasonably be expected to affect them;
  
  
• The statutory requirement that he Authority in performing its functions have regard to the commitment and principles set out in the Volunteer Charter; and,
  
  
• The statutory requirement that the Authority is responsible for developing policy and organisational arrangements that encourage, maintain and strengthen the capacity of volunteer officers and members to provide the Authority’s fire and emergency services.

The reason and purpose for these amendments were to set aside industrial arrangements introduced in the final years of the Brumby Government. Those arrangements failed to recognise that CFA and its services to the public are volunteer based and that the role of paid staff is to support such volunteers services as and when determined by the CFA’s Chief Officer and the Board of the Authority according to their statutory obligations.

Since these amendments, the CFA has fought and won cases in the Fair Work Commission and Federal Court that uphold its managerial and statutory responsibility to determine paid staff numbers and allocations within the organisation including its brigades on a needs basis as determined by the Chief Officer.

The CFA model recruits and integrates paid firefighters into volunteer brigades where they are needed to support the delivery of CFA services.

Labor’s policy axes this approach - it takes away the Chief’s role of determining these matters based on expertise and transfers it to an industrial board of reference. Further, it eliminates local volunteers and their state representatives from having any input into these decisions, despite their knowledge and experience.

This new Labor policy will have significant impacts upon CFA’s future and inevitably lead to a dramatic increase in costs to Victorians without any increase in public safety.

VFBV are deeply opposed to your support for the reinstatement of the previously short lived industrial board of reference. It changes the successful nature of the CFA as an organisation (which was consistently lauded by the Bushfire Royal Commission). It is an egregious attack on the independence and statutory powers of CFA’s Chief Officer. Decision making on key staffing issues is perverted from a critical operational matter to a matter of industrial negotiation.

To be clear, volunteers consider the office of the Chief Officer to be sacrosanct, and any attack on the independence and statutory authority of their Chief will be met with fierce and unrelenting resistance.

VFBV met with shadow Minister Wade Noonan last week following the announcement to express its concern and dismay at the policy. Nothing was provided during or since that meeting to allay our fears and we remain deeply concerned.

It was under the Bracks Labor Government that the Volunteer Charter was negotiated and signed by Steve Bracks as Premier, the CFA Chairman and the volunteer representatives. We now find that you have turned your back on the principles and values you told us were an enduring commitment. Volunteers have every right to feel aggrieved. Quite rightly, as the word spreads - volunteers will see your Party’s policy as a betrayal to the trust and respect afforded to you by CFA volunteers.
Sincerely,

Andrew Ford
Chief Executive Officer

Quizzed today on ABC radio about the prospect of merging CFA and MFB to save money, Minister Wells answered that this will not be contemplated by a Coalition Government.

Although consistent with previous Government commitments from both Coalition and Labor, this is reassuring news.

There was extensive discussion at the Bushfires Royal Commission about the disastrous effect merging CFA and MFB could have on Victoria’s volunteer capacity.

The Victorian Farmers Federation and the Country Fire Authority are working with local volunteers and farmers to trial a new grain harvesting code of practice.

The VFF/CFA grain harvesting code of practice is based on the South Australian code, which prohibits harvesting when conditions reach 35 on the grassfire danger index. The trial of the grain harvesting guide by local CFA groups around Warracknabeal over harvest this year is a voluntary one, with all harvesters choosing to opt in if they want to contribute to the pilot and test the guide.

The guide uses the Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) model to give growers parameters about when they should stop harvesting. The GFDI takes into account average wind speed, temperature and relative humidity, and the code has a sliding scale which calculates a figure, and stipulates grain harvest should be suspended when this figure exceeds 35.

The guide is supported by a brochure that outlines the GFDI and the potential fire spread under certain conditions, as well as including recommended practices for grain harvesters during the Fire Danger Period, and on high risk days. A simple ‘dashboard sticker’ is also provided as a quick calculator for when local condition reach the point where it is recommended that grain harvesting cease. The aim of this trial is to provide a more common sense approach to grain harvesting that takes into account local conditions – rather than a blanket ban on harvesting on Total Fire Ban days.

VFBV was provided a small window of opportunity with a three week consultation period in which to collect and provide feedback to CFA on the proposal before it was introduced. VFBV field officers worked with District Council members to seek input from brigades who may be affected by the proposal. Good feedback was received from brigades and groups across the State, with some positive suggestions on improvements to the draft proposal. This feedback was compiled by VFBV and provided back to CFA to inform the final grain harvesting code of conduct.

On October 31, VFF Grains President Brett Hosking and CFA Chief Officer Euan Ferguson launched the trial at Cannum Fire Station near Warracknabeal, with local VFF and CFA members. VFF Grains President Brett Hosking said “the advantage of this scheme is that it provides a straightforward, user-friendly, and objective way for growers to manage potential fire risk on their individual properties and uses data which most growers would have on hand”.

CFA Chief Officer Euan Ferguson said “research is telling us that fires which start during harvesting can and do occur. We want to do everything we can to prevent costly fires in equipment and in valuable grain crops at this crucial time of year. If farmers can consider suspending harvesting during the few hours of highest fire danger we should see a reduction in fire starts. Last season was busy. Early indications suggest that the fire season may be 2 to 3 weeks earlier than in past years. It’s so important that we’re all well prepared across the state.”

The trial will continue throughout the summer harvest period within these groups in District 17, with an assessment of the trial expected at the end of the season.  VFBV will continue to advocate for volunteers to have sufficient time to comment as part of the assessment process at the end of the trial period, before decisions are made post trial.