Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will stand here and tell the truth about what is going on in my home state and my community about our volunteers and about our career firefighters. I will tell the truth about what is actually happening in our community and about how in an election period this government jumped on a state issue to exploit it for its purposes for an election.

I wanted to start today by acknowledging our SES volunteers, who as we speak have not quit in droves, as the government and government MPs are suggesting. Last night, yesterday and today they are meeting with communities to support the areas of my community that are under flood threat. We have rising water in Victoria, and as we stand here today debating this bill—which will affect the SES, not just the CFA, in Victoria—our volunteers are getting on with supporting our community. They have asked their employers for leave under the Fair Work Act—measures that were introduced by the former Labor government to support volunteers. They are standing side by side with communities. They have skills, they train every week for these emergencies and they are supporting our communities which are currently facing the heartbreak of another damaging flood.

The last time our area was under threat, when the Loddon was rising, was in 2010. What they are saying to the communities of Charlton, Newbridge and Newstead is that it will not be as bad, they hope, as September 2010 but it may be worse than November 2010. And most people will remember November 2010 because it was actually the state election day when our area was under a similar threat.

But why I acknowledge their hard work and dedication to our community at the beginning of my speech is that, whilst members of the government rally the politics about this issue, the volunteers in my electorate are doing what they have always done: taking time out of their days and taking time out of their work to do what they are passionate about—volunteering to support their community. And this bill and this government's ranting and rhetoric have not stopped them from doing that. The Andrews government in Victoria have not stopped them from doing that. They are continuing to volunteer because they are proud and passionate about their community. And that is something that the government does not know. There are not thousands of volunteers resigning. Yes, there have been some, but when I go out and talk to the CFA brigades in my electorate they say: 'I volunteer because I support my community. I am proud of my community and I want to be there for my community when something happens.'

I would also like to acknowledge, in saying that statement, the Maldon CFA. People forget—if you do not know and you are not a regional MP—that our CFA brigades, like our SES units, do more than just fight fires. They do more than that—they are such an important part of our regional communities. In Maldon, our CFA is practically involved in every single event that happens in the town, particularly around Easter. I acknowledge Robert Thompson and his family. If you are in Maldon and involved in the CFA, you will know the Thompsons. They make sure that the oldest continuous Easter festival and Easter parade continues to happen in Maldon because of the volunteer work of the CFA. During this dispute—and it is a dispute—there was the Woodend Winter Arts Festival. That is another example of what CFA volunteers do outside of the work they do in emergency situations. At the Woodend Winter Arts Festival they made sure the parking was appropriate and they ushered cars in.

Regional MPs know the importance of our CFAs beyond just what they do as volunteers to keep our communities safe. Our CFA brigades are organised volunteers who help out in so many other ways. In Bendigo, the Golden Square CFA helps to organise the popular farmers market that we have there. They help us with setting up. I am a Bendigo farmers market volunteer and quite often we work together to set up the market. These brigades are a big part of our community.

Something that has also been lost is that our CFA brigades reflect our community. They are men and women from many walks of life. What a number of them said to me during this dispute was that they want the politicians out of it and to stop politicising them and their brigades. They want the division to end. They do not want to see their service continue to be divided by politics. They want to get on with what they have always done—protecting and supporting our community.

And that is what we saw happen in the election. There were a couple of stories that jumped out at me and reminded me why I am so proud to represent the area of Bendigo. One article I want to highlight, which appeared in the Bendigo Advertiser on 13 June, talks about the camaraderie within our CFA between the career firefighters and the volunteer firefighters. Entitled 'Working together', it has a picture of Geoffrey Cain, from the Eaglehawk Fire Brigade, and Stephen Harris, from the Bendigo Fire Brigade, standing together. The Bendigo electorate is very similar to other Victorian country electorates. We have an integrated fire station—the Bendigo Fire Brigade. That is in the heart of Bendigo. Bendigo is a town of 100,000 people. And then surrounding the Bendigo fire station we have a number of volunteer firefighter stations. There are about 60 volunteer brigades across the Bendigo electorate—from very small communities like Walmer and Mia Mia to the larger outer suburbs of Bendigo like Eaglehawk, Strathfieldsaye, Huntly and Kangaroo Flat.

That article spoke about how closely our career and volunteer firefighters work together. Career firefighters from the Bendigo Station and the volunteers from Eaglehawk quite often do training exercises together that end with a lunch:

"We try to train with the integrated station as often as we can … It just shows the camaraderie between the integrated station and volunteers." … both brigades had a common goal: "We're here to protect the community."

These are the words of volunteer firefighters. These are the words of career firefighters. I understand that these are not the words of Liberal party politicians, but these are the words of the career firefighters and what they are saying about the work they do. These training sessions are not just with Eaglehawk. They are also with Golden Square and a number of other volunteer firefighter stations that we have in the area.

What is frustrating about this debate is that, to this moment, the government still has not outlined how this legislation will actually change the bargain and the proposed agreement that is currently going on. We have heard a lot of rhetoric from the other side. We have heard a lot of chest-beating about how they are going to step up and defend volunteers. But what we have not heard is how this legislation will practically and technically change the bargaining that is going on in Victoria. So let's just park the politics for a moment and look at what is before us. I really support this legislation going off to review to test its rigour and see if it will actually change things.

Nobody denies that bargaining is tough. Bargaining is always tough; whether you are an employer or an employee, it is tough. If you are closely involved with bargaining at the state level with the CFA you will meet people on all sides of the bargaining who say it has always been tough. It is up to the Victorian state government to sit down and resolve this. And they do have a challenge ahead of them—I acknowledge that. But is it right for this place to intervene in that bargaining in that way? Is it going to be a slippery slope, where this government intervenes in all bargaining cases? Every time a state gets itself into trouble will this parliament try to amend the Fair Work Act? We have heard from nurses who say they do not know how this legislation could affect nurses. We have heard from ambulance employees in Victoria who say they do not know whether this legislation will affect them—because it is up to legislation to determine what an emergency body is. There are a number of new terms that have been created by this government in this bill and the Fair Work Act.

I have been speaking to some metropolitan based government MPs. They were not aware that we have volunteers who work in ambulance—our CERTs. In the town of Maldon, there is a team of volunteers who have been trained because they do not have an ambulance station in Maldon—the closest one is in Castlemaine. If there is an emergency, they will call a CERT and the CERT will be there. They are trained to have the skills to be a first response, to be there on hand in case there is an emergency in the town until the ambulance arrives. In what has been put forward by the government, we do not know if this change will affect those people in Ambulance Victoria and the CERTs. This legislation opens a Pandora's box about where volunteers will sit and where employees of emergency services will sit.

The CFA and UFU have been negotiating a new EBA for over 1,000 days. So this is not a new issue; it is an issue that has been ongoing for a while. Yet on the eve of an election, this government chose to politicise this issue and divide our communities. I was outraged then that a Prime Minister and a workplace relations minister could divide my communities the way that they did—communities who work really hard to support one another, as they are doing, as we speak, in my electorate with SES and CFA brigades ready to mobilise to support residents and businesses with sandbagging, to help people if they get caught in floodwaters. This bill is not stopping volunteers from doing what they have always done in the Bendigo electorate.

What the government do not realise is the damage that they have done by politicising this issue during the election, to the extent that the Victorian Liberal Party set up a page to fundraise off this issue. They set up a website. They registered this. When people signed the online petition, 'Hands off the CFA', they then sent them an email asking them for a donation. How this government used this issue to fundraise before the federal election could not get any more transparent.

On election day, it was quite confronting for my family. My partner's grandparents died in a house fire in Kangaroo Flat and it is something that they still reflect on because losing loved ones in a house fire is hard. But as I arrived at the last polling station, we drove past the house where they perished. I did not get the chance to meet them; it happened when my partner was quite young. We also drove past the cemetery, and stuck to the fence of the cemetery were Liberal Party endorsed 'Hands off CFA' corflutes. It was authorised by Exhibition Street and someone from the Liberal Party had gone around posting these all over town—another example of how the government are not genuine about supporting the Victorian government and showing leadership to resolve this crisis. They are only interested in the politics of this issue.

See this speech in context