Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation (SAMFS Firefighters) Amendment Bill
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (21:07): I will not go over all of the issues with regard to this bill, other than to say that I think the government has the start of a very good bill on the go here. There is just not enough in it, and I am very hopeful that, with the support of the opposition, the Independents and minor parties, it will get to where it needs be.
I declare the fact that I am an active CFS brigade member with the Wilmington brigade. Like all of us here, if you spend half your time in Adelaide and only half your time at home—in fact, in my case, probably half my time in Adelaide, a quarter of my time at home and a quarter of my time anywhere else in the electorate—you do not get to participate as much as you could. However, if I am home and the alarm goes then I attend. I put on the record though that I am not looking for this protection for myself either. Like the member for Morphett, that is not why I am here talking about this.
There is no doubt that the MFS deserves this protection, and I congratulate the government for giving this protection to the MFS. I also highlight the fact that within the MFS there are paid and retained staff. They are not all the professional firefighters that people would often think of. There are also retained staff who are not full-time firefighters, in fact, a long way from it. Guess what? The full-time, professional, fully paid-up firefighters deserve this protection, but so do the retained MFS firefighters deserve this protection.
There should be no difference, whether they are full-time firefighters or retained MFS staff. But guess what? So do the volunteers. The volunteers deserve exactly the same protection as well. The protection for people doing a job and facing risks on behalf of the community should not be linked to whether they are paid a lot, paid a little or paid nothing. If they are doing it on behalf of the community and they are facing exactly the same risks, they should receive exactly the same protections.
I think any member of parliament would think that. It astounds us over here that a Labor government would not have that right at the core of its principles. I think it should be for absolutely everybody to pursue it that way. To be told, as we have been, that it is just too costly to afford that protection is a very sad thing to hear.
I do think the government is working under a bit of a misapprehension. I think the government may well have it in its mind that you have fully paid-up, full-time MFS firefighters in the metropolitan area ready to fight metropolitan-type fires facing metropolitan-type health risks, and volunteer firefighters out in the country just helping at car crashes, bushfires or grass fires and they are all volunteers. The real world is a very long way from that, very different from that. There is absolutely enormous cross-over.
I think the government is also acting on an unfortunate misconception that CFS and MFS firefighters are different people—very often they are exactly the same person. There are countless retained MFS firefighters who are also CFS volunteers across our state, an enormous number of them. There are CFS brigades working throughout metropolitan Adelaide. There are 16 MFS stations in country South Australia: Kadina, Kapunda, Moonta, Tanunda, Wallaroo, Berri, Loxton, Renmark, Mount Gambier, Murray Bridge, Peterborough, Port Augusta, Port Lincoln, Whyalla, Port Pirie and Victor Harbor, three of which are in the electorate of Stuart that I represent.
Guess what: they very often go to exactly the same incidents and they support each other and they very often do exactly the same work and they very often face exactly the same health risks, so they deserve exactly the same long-term health protection from the government.
Just last night the alarm went off at Port Augusta prison: MFS turned up, CFS turned up, Port Augusta MFS turned up, and Stirling North, our local Port Augusta CFS brigade, turned up. Fortunately, it happened to be a false alarm (as an aside, that happens very often, which, as members would understand, is exceptionally frustrating, particularly for the volunteers). Putting that aside for the moment, they both turned up, and if there had been a problem they both would have done their job and both would have faced exactly the same risks.
So, where we have in these 16 locations across rural South Australia MFS and CFS collocated in the same town, they share the work, they share the risks. Guess what else: in the rest of country South Australia, where we are not fortunate enough to have those 16 MFS stations, the CFS do it all. So, it is not a matter of just saying that you have your fully paid-up firefighters in metropolitan Adelaide putting out skyscrapers on fire, or whatever the movie might tell you is the standard thing, and out in the country you just have local yokel volunteers waving a garden hose on a grass fire—nothing could be further from the truth in both instances. They share the risks, they share the work and they should have the opportunity to share the same protection.
It is a fundamental right that, where the risks are the same, working on behalf of the community, they should not be separated. In fact, it would be, I suspect, quite risky of the government to deliberately do so. I am not a legally-trained person, like a few other people in the house here, but I suspect it may well open up the government to risks of litigation and that sort of thing if the government actively decides, knowing that the risks are the same, to not actually give the same sort of protection.
CFS and MFS both deserve the same quality helmets; they both deserve the same quality personal protective equipment when they go into a fire; and, they both deserve the same level of long-term personal protection too, which covers unfortunate health outcomes related to their work. They both deserve exactly the same protections. The risk to the government's finances from claims is directly related to the chance of a firefighter contracting a very unfortunate disease which is directly related to the participation and involvement that they do. Certainly, if you are a person who is very involved, face lots of risks and participate often, your chance (very unfortunately) is higher. If you are a person who does not participate a lot, and you do not expose yourself to those risks a lot, your chance of contracting one of these diseases is of course lower.
The principle is that the right to the appropriate level of protection is the same for all people; if an MFS person deserves it, a CFS person deserves it. If a paid firefighter deserves it, a volunteer firefighter deserves it. If you do the same job, you deserve the same protection from the government.
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