Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I did ask some serious questions and the minister has gone nowhere near them. I did ask whether she understood that the cross-crewing would not affect volunteers because cross-crewing was about a specific issue in the agreement between the CFA and employees—it was about an employees issue—and that has no implications for the CFA volunteers. I asked the minister for her view about the peer support clause because it deals with firefighters having their peers—that is, other paid firefighters—dealing with traumatic incidents and giving them peer support. The third question was in relation to uniforms. It is clear that the point firefighters have made is that it was raised at the royal commission into bushfires that there were communication problems and there had to be changes. One of the changes that has been agreed between the CFA and the paid firefighters is that they will be able to identify the training that paid firefighters have. No-one is saying in the agreement that the volunteers have to have the same identification. I am not a trained firefighter but it would seem sensible to me that if you are in a serious situation, an emergency situation, you are able to understand whether your colleague has been trained in breathing apparatus and at what level they have been trained to deal with an issue. I would have thought that was common sense, and that is one of the issues that the royal commission has raised.

So it is clear that these do matters do not affect firefighters. You can assert that it affects firefighters, which has been happening ever since we have been here, but assertions are not proof. You cannot simply come in and assert that this is the position. The problem is that Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria has made lots of assertions with not a lot of substance. The problem we have here is that we have a government that have not deemed it appropriate to look at the facts of the issue. They have not deemed it appropriate to read the clauses and examine how they operate. They have simply adopted the same position of asserting an expansionary mode for the agreement without any factual evidence.

Another issue that was raised in the minister's response—which, again, did not go to any of the issues that I asked her to deal with; and I do not suppose we will get many answers tonight—was about the agreement being unlawful in relation to the Equal Opportunity Act. Minister, I am sure you are aware that that issue was dealt with, so maybe I should ask you whether the agreement does breach the Equal Opportunity Act. I am sure you understand that this is not something that can happen under either the Fair Work Act or the state act.

In your speech, Minister, when you were winding up your second reading debate, you spoke about a hostile union takeover and the handing of control to the UFU. Minister, could you go back to the questions I have asked you and try to address them without rhetoric? Perhaps you could actually address them on the basis of what the meaning of the agreement is, rather than simply assert that it is an expansionary clause when it is nothing of the kind? Could you also take up the issue about the handing of control to the UFU? I would like you to look at the Fair Work Act 2009, section 27, which outlines a number of state laws that are not excluded by section 27 of the act. You would be aware that section 27 excludes a number of state laws and this does not. One of the laws is in 1AB of the Fair Work Act, in section 27: the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 of Victoria. It does not matter what you put in an agreement, you cannot exclude equal opportunity. Minister, I am sure you are aware of that, but you continue to perpetrate the falsehood that equal opportunities will be excluded. You cannot do it. This is fearmongering. It is fearmongering in relation to equal opportunities and it has nothing to do with any hostile union takeover. So to start, Minister, if you do not mind, try to answer the questions I asked and maybe deal with the issue of the Fair Work Act 2009, section 27, and the clear position that, no matter what an enterprise agreement says, it cannot exclude the Equal Opportunities Act 2010 of Victoria. It cannot. Even if it is a clause that is not lawful, the clause is not applicable. That is the law.

You are a lawyer, Minister. You know these things, but you come here and you just assert falsehoods about this agreement. You assert issues that are not true. You argue an expansionary proposition when it is not true. So, Minister, how about actually dealing with the issues that are being asked here tonight instead of the rhetoric that you run? How about dealing with the issues of cross-crewing and actually accepting that it is not about volunteers? How about dealing with the issue of peer support and accepting that it is a proper and sensible thing to have in an agreement when firefighters are in such a dangerous occupation with traumatic incidents, some of them on a daily basis? And how about accepting the reality of the uniform proposition—that it is not about telling the volunteers how they would be dressed when they go to fight a fire? It is just not true. The EEO position is just not correct. How about dealing with those four issues, Minister, instead of giving us another rhetorical flourish that just does not go to the questions that we are asking? You have a responsibility to actually deal with the questions and not just take every assertion that has been made by the volunteers or every assertion that has been made by the former chief executive, who had no credibility in her evidence to the inquiry. Actually deal with the issues that are before us.