Wednesday, 5 June 2019

 Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (16:02): As I was saying in relation to presumptive rights, it is a commitment which the Victorian government made, and this commitment was the right commitment to make. Firefighters who get cancer currently have to go to great lengths to prove that firefighting was the cause of their cancer, despite the scientific evidence showing that a number of cancers are caused by firefighting activities under the current laws.

Reforms under this bill provide long-awaited presumptive rights to cancer compensation to all firefighters, whether they are career firefighters or volunteer firefighters, and it does so on an equal basis. This right created by this legislation will mean that eligible firefighters claiming compensation for these cancers will not have to prove that firefighting is the cause of their cancer. Instead it will be presumed that their cancer was caused by their firefighting and that they have an entitlement to compensation. This reform will help overcome the challenges that firefighters have faced in accessing compensation for cancer which has arisen from their service. As I said, the scheme will deliver equal access to compensation for career and volunteer firefighters. It will apply to firefighters who have developed cancer because of their service and have been diagnosed since 1 June 2016. Rules that require volunteer firefighters to have attended a specific number of fires are problematic, so the presumptive rights scheme will instead mirror the approach taken in Queensland, which has no specific incident requirements.

WorkSafe will be the body that administers the scheme, with all presumptive rights payments being administered by the workers compensation scheme. The scheme will be reimbursed for volunteer claims as well as legal and other administrative costs from those claims by special appropriation from the Consolidated Fund. This scheme will also support volunteer firefighters by taking into account exceptional exposure events, enabling firefighters who have attended such an event to qualify for the presumption even if they do not meet the minimum years of service—additional benefits that no other scheme has. An expert committee will be established to advise WorkSafe on these matters. The government will also create a dedicated assistance fund to support the very small number of people who may not fit the criteria of this scheme.

The bill also works towards the modernisation of Victoria’s fire services. No-one likes change, especially those opposite, but reform for our firefighters is needed to maintain a purpose fit for the state, and there are many drivers that show the need for this bill, population growth being one such driver. No-one would deny that our population is growing, and the environment in which our fire services operate in is changing rapidly too. Victoria’s population has grown from 3.2 million in 1966 to 6.5 million in 2018. The population is projected to reach 10 million by 2051, an increase of 4.6 million, with growth concentrated in major regional centres and Melbourne’s outer suburbs.

Our climate is changing rapidly. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and 2018 was Victoria’s third warmest on record, with rainfall about 25 per cent below the average, the lowest since 2006. Heatwaves are also lengthening fire seasons, and bushfires will likely increase in frequency and intensity and affect more densely populated areas.

Operational changes are also placing greater demands on the state’s fire services. In 2006 CFA brigades attended 22 294 emergency incidents. Over 10 years to 2016 this increased by 25 per cent to 27 859. The number of incidents that the 37 integrated brigades responded to has increased significantly from 12 214 incidents in 2006 to 18 539 in 2016, which represents an increase of 51.7 per cent.

In terms of governance, this bill will establish a new fire services agency, Fire Rescue Victoria, which will replace the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. FRV will be constituted by a new fire rescue commissioner, who will replace the MFB board and assume all of the existing functions, powers and duties of the board, the CEO and the chief officer too. These changes will ensure clear lines of responsibility within FRV both in the day-to-day management of the organisation and in the critical time of responding to emergencies. It needs to do this as outdated governance structures have resulted in a lack of direction, and confusion regarding overall responsibilities in some areas. This change will result in the CFA’s existing 38 career and integrated stations being located within the FRV fire district. These stations will therefore become the responsibility of FRV, effectively bringing together all of the state’s career firefighters into the one organisation. Differences in CFA and MFB practices and equipment affect the ability of firefighters from each service to work together in responding to emergencies.

The bill will enshrine the important role of volunteers in the CFA by inserting an additional responsibility for the CFA board to support the effective and sustainable recruitment, development and retention of volunteer officers and members to deliver capability in the provision of the CFA services. It is for these reasons that our firefighting services need to be modernised in the way that I have so described. It needs to take into account the health and wellbeing of all firefighters, whether they are career firefighters or whether they are volunteers. It needs to ensure that all communities are safe as the population grows and as the operative and physical environments change around us. I commend the bill to the house.

 Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern—Leader of the Opposition) (16:09): One of the primary tasks of any government is to keep its citizens safe, and when it comes to natural disasters, when it comes to bushfires, nobody does that better than our volunteer-based CFA. Yet despite the very proud traditions and proud history of our volunteer firefighters, this government is hell-bent on destroying the CFA as we know it, and for that this government stands condemned—absolutely condemned. We have seen in numbers, in raw numbers, the effect of this government’s war on CFA volunteers.

A member interjected.

Mr M O’BRIEN: It is a war on volunteers, Minister, and I am about to tell you and the Parliament what the casualties are. In the 2013–14 annual report CFA operational volunteer numbers were 38 335. By the 2017–18 annual report those numbers had dropped to 34 586—3749 fewer volunteers. They are volunteers who walked away; volunteers who were driven away by this government’s constant attacks on them, their integrity and their professionalism. That is a 9.8 per cent fall. This is having real ramifications for community safety. We saw significant fires earlier this year, and a lot of people in those areas, the community who understands those areas, said it was due to a lack of planned burning. The planned burning was not happening. Why was the planned burning not happening? Maybe we should look at a letter from the project manager of the planned burn task force pilot program, Mr Tony Brady, on a CFA letterhead dated 29 January 2019. In that letter he says, and I quote:

CFA’s capacity to undertake planned burning has been restricted by a lack of volunteer numbers …

So as this government attacks CFA volunteers and undermines them, those volunteers are walking away, and the CFA itself says the lack of volunteer numbers is what is leading to a lack of planned burning, and that is putting our state at risk. That is putting us at risk. Those numbers are being felt desperately, and I would like to read into the record—

Ms Neville interjected.

Mr M O’BRIEN: You have had your chance, Minister. You have had your chance. This is my chance. I would like to read into the record part of an article from the Weekly Times of 14 November 2018, entitled ‘CFA sick of being treated like second-class firefighters’:

The CFA has lost 3534 of its operational volunteers since the end of 2014, a whopping 9 per cent slump in its active firefighting force.

Many of these volunteers led the battles against the massive fires that engulfed the state in 2003, 2006 and Black Saturday in 2009.

…

This comes despite Andrews Government attempts to stop volunteer numbers being released publicly.

Well, why would that be the case? We wonder. The article goes on:

The ‘CFA at a Glance’ quarterly update on volunteer numbers has not been published since October last year and the Government refused to release the authority’s 2017–18 annual report, despite it being signed off by the Victorian Auditor General in late August.

Again, the government did not want it to come out before the state election, because then the full scale of their attack on CFA volunteers would have become apparent. The article continues:

However, The Weekly Times has seen CFA data that shows it is bleeding firefighters.

Volunteers say they’re being treated as second-class firefighters by the Government’s determination to split the CFA and strip it of responsibility for at least 35 integrated stations in regional cities and outer Melbourne.

‘Splitting the CFA takes us on a highway to hell,’ said former Frankston volunteer Charles Dennis, who left his brigade early last year.

Frankston! And good to see the member for Frankston come in here. Perhaps he can listen to more of what former Frankston CFA volunteer Charles Dennis said:

‘The more volunteers we lose from outer metro stations the less surge capacity we’re going to have.’

Bealiba CFA volunteer Nifty Gordon said there was a ‘massive swell of people pissed off with that man Dan (Andrews)’.

‘I’m worried if he gets this through (legislation to split the CFA) we’re going to see more people walk away from it,’ he said.

Other volunteers who have left the CFA say they are sick of being portrayed by the Government and United Firefighters Union as ‘second-class’ fire fighters and ‘country hicks’.

A brigade captain in one of outer Melbourne’s highest bushfire-risk areas said he had lost members who were sick of being vilified.

‘A big part of being in the CFA is community pride,’ he said.

‘(But) people now question our response times and validity of our training.’

This is a government that has taken the stick to the most precious people in our community; volunteers who keep us safe, who save property and who save lives. And why? Why is this government so keen to marginalise the CFA volunteers? Why are they so keen to drive CFA volunteers out from emergency services? Well, whether you want to call them Peter’s puppets or Marshall’s marionettes, the answer is the same: these people here are dancing to the tune of Peter Marshall, the secretary of the United Firefighters Union (UFU). Like Voldemort, the Premier cannot even bring himself to mention his name in this place. He will not say the words ‘Peter Marshall’, but we know that Peter Marshall is imprinted on his brain and we know that he controls every single policy decision. Not only has he been prepared to see board members sacked, CEOs sacked and chief fire officers sacked, he lost one of his own ministers—one of his own ministers who was prepared to stand up for the CFA, stand up for the community’s safety and stand up for volunteers and say, ‘This is wrong’. But when push came to shove—push literally came to shove—that minister, Jane Garrett, was thrown under a bus by this Premier, by this government, in order to continue their war on the CFA to appease Peter Marshall. I do not know what is on that videotape, but it must be a cracker. It must be an absolute cracker to see this government sell out the CFA.

Now, I make this point. The government says, ‘Oh, there won’t be that much change’. Well, that is absolute nonsense. This government will make sure that integrated stations are not integrated; they will have a Berlin wall put down the middle of them, and the volunteers will be locked out. They will not be able to have the run of their stations. They will not truly be integrated. For the minister’s information, integrated means bringing together, not separated. This sounds like the same sort of weird theory that was used in apartheid South Africa: that they can grow separately but together. No, integrated means integrated. This treating CFA volunteers like second-class citizens is disgraceful. It is immoral. It is absolutely immoral.

The Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission said that the surge capacity of our CFA was absolutely essential to keeping this community safe—absolutely vital. Yet this government, through this bill, through its actions in attacking the CFA and undermining CFA volunteers, is diminishing that surge capacity. Because what happens when, God forbid, the next Black Saturday occurs? What happens when it occurs? And we know sadly, from history, that one day this will occur. What happens when there are no CFA volunteers because this government has driven them away? Who is going to fight those fires? Well, Peter Marshall’s answer is, ‘We’ll just employ thousands of extra UFU members and everything will be fine’. Well, no. Community safety does not work like that. Communities do not work like that. The bushfires royal commission knows it does not work like that, and that is why this is a bad bill.

Now, in the last minute let me make completely clear that this side of the house completely supports presumptive rights for cancer. We tried to introduce legislation in the last Parliament, but Labor voted against it. We tried to introduce legislation in this Parliament; Labor voted against it. We want to get that legislation through to give all firefighters, career and volunteer, equal presumptive rights, and we will vote to support equal presumptive rights, but what we will not support is an attack on our CFA, an attack on our CFA volunteers or an attack on our regional, rural and outer suburban communities. And we will not support something which makes Victoria less safe, which is what this bill does.

 Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (16:19): I rise to speak on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019, and I do so in the full knowledge that we as a Labor government took this to the 2018 state election. Not only did we take it to the election, but we were very clear about what we would do to prosecute the need for reform with our fire services across this state.

The CFA was established back in the 1950s, and over that period of time the firefighting complexity and the challenges that firefighters face in this state have dramatically changed. They have changed because we have had massive population growth. Through that period our population has doubled, and in the next decade or so it will double again. Not only that, but of course the challenges of fighting fires in modern multistorey developments are much more complicated than they were in the 1950s. As a consequence I think we need to put in place comprehensive reform that recognises these particular challenges.

But further, and one of my colleagues mentioned this earlier, we have the challenges that come from climate change. Those challenges mean that we have longer fire seasons and we have longer periods of intense drought, and we need to recognise those challenges and put in place the resources that are required to meet those challenges.

I can remember when I was a federal MP for the federal seat of Corangamite the bushfires that took place through that period of time. In fact I can recall the bushfires royal commission that investigated the way in which we as a government and the way in which we as a society and a community responded to those tragic events that took place.

Like many others in this place I have many friends that are career firefighters and I have many friends that are volunteer firefighters, and I want to acknowledge each and every one of them for keeping our communities safe and putting themselves in harm’s way to protect the communities in which they reside. To my way of thinking they are fantastic people.

As I said earlier, our state has grown dramatically. The challenges to firefighting are more complicated and complex now, and this necessary reform I think will set our fire services up for many years to come. I certainly look forward to working with the minister and the government on this.

On Sunday I had the pleasure, with the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, to meet with the integrated stations in and around the Geelong area. We had at that forum both career firefighters—senior management from the CFA region—and also volunteer fire services, and in a very detailed way the minister went through and explained the reforms and took questions and gave answers as to what it meant for them. My observation of that meeting and from the conversations I had with career firefighters and volunteer firefighters was that Geelong firefighters want to get on with this reform. They want to participate, and they want to be engaged in the reform process. They acknowledge that this is a big reform. Of course if we accept the proposition that is being put forward by the Liberal Party that we need further consultation, then I think we run the great risk of delaying these necessary reforms for a further fire season. I think these reforms are necessary, I think they are critical and I think we very much need to get on with implementation.

I was also reflecting on what others did when they were given that great gift of government and reflecting on the bushfires royal commission on the Black Saturday fires that took place in 2009. If my memory serves me correctly, when the Liberal Party was given that opportunity to be in government they actually cut the CFA budget to the tune of $66 million. That was the Liberal Party’s commitment to the CFA. It was to take the back of an axe to the CFA and to cut not only the resources that career and volunteer firefighters need but of course the resources that their support staff need. That has been the approach of the Liberal Party in terms of this reform. I can remember through that period having many conversations with members in the community where I lived about the consequences of these cuts and what it meant to the delivery of fire services.

I have also been listening intently to a number of contributions from a number of MPs through the course of the proceedings over the last day or so, and I particularly want to dispel some of the myths that I have heard in this place. I want to make it clear that the fire registration board only registers firefighters who are career firefighters. It does not play any role in registering volunteer firefighters. I have heard that claim made on a number of occasions. It is wrong; it is false. In fact it is simply scaremongering, and it should really be condemned for what it is.

These reforms are of course important. This bill builds on the commitments that we have made to firefighters across this state. Whether they be career firefighters or volunteer firefighters, by the type of activity they are undertaking we acknowledge and recognise that they are exposed to a number of carcinogens that other members of the community are not, and as a consequence of that we acknowledge that there is an increased probability that they will pick up certain cancers. We have seen presumptive rights legislation passed in other jurisdictions across this country. We have made this commitment that we will implement these necessary reforms.

I know from talking to many firefighters, whether they be career or volunteer, that they know people amongst their ranks that have suffered cancer, and the likelihood is that some of those cancers were contracted as a consequence of the service that they provided to their communities and to their state, whether that be as a career firefighter or a volunteer firefighter. We very much want to see this legislation passed as quickly as possible so that we can get on with implementing this reform in a timely way that delivers fire services for this state.

 Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (16:29): Normally I would say it is a pleasure to rise to join a debate, but I have got to say it is not a pleasure to join this debate, because the bill before the house has very, very few redeeming features. Some elements of the bill certainly are welcome, but they are very, very few and far between, and of course I am referring to sections that relate to presumptive rights. If the government had followed the lead of the coalition parties for now a very long time, presumptive rights would have been in place and operating—all done. Indeed that aspect of the bill certainly still has our support, as was affirmed by the Leader of the Opposition in this chamber just a few minutes ago.

The rest of the bill is a disgraceful attack on one of the pre-eminent volunteer organisations not just in this state, not just in this nation but around the world. It is a disgraceful attack. It is in fact I think as close to corrupt behaviour as I have ever seen in public life in Victoria because it is a blatant payback to the United Firefighters Union (UFU) for the support they provided—the aggressive support they provided—for the now Premier of Victoria and his colleagues in 2014. I say ‘aggressive’ very deliberately, because it was aggression in a physical sense. It was not just enthusiastic support; it was aggression in a physical sense.

Victoria has a world-class fire service. This is a bill that sets out to systematically dismantle that world-class fire service, and the consequences are potentially catastrophic. At a minimum this bill will compromise the capacity of the state to respond to major fires. I want to make it clear that I have genuine enormous respect for both the courage and the competence of our firefighters, be they career firefighters or volunteer firefighters—absolute respect for their courage and for their competence. But it seems to me that too many career firefighters are being used by their union and being used by the government for a series of goals that have really nothing to do with running a world-class service, because the end goal is to destroy an organisation that the union and the government see as being a barrier to a unionised fire service—because they see here an opportunity to expand the public sector, to expand the power base of a relatively small union and to boost union membership at the expense of the Victorian community.

Right from the start this has been a campaign of lies and a campaign of intimidation. The first we saw of this campaign really was way back in 2014, and that was the intent of the leadership of the union through dint of numbers to intimidate the Parliament during the estimates hearings in 2014. We had then Minister Wells at the estimates hearings, and we had the gallery absolutely jam-packed. We had the area outside the hearing chamber at the top of the stairs on the Legislative Council side absolutely jam-packed and what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to corral the minister in the hearing room. It was absolutely disgraceful. Of course we know about, and we have heard about frequently, the intimidation of coalition booth workers during the 2014 campaign, sometimes physical but certainly with no veil on the aggression—not at all. And then of course there was the lie of the fake fire uniforms.

And it did not improve when the government changed. Very, very early in the piece, early in the life of the government, we saw the draft enterprise agreement prepared by Peter Marshall. We know the drawbacks with that, and I certainly do not intend to go into them again this afternoon. The CFA board of course stood up to the union, and they were sacked. The minister stood up to the union and she was forced out. And that was just a few of the many, many people that have tried to stand up to this union, tried to stand up to this government, and they have been forced out of the fire services. They are lost to the fire services in this state.

When finally the bill arrived in the Legislative Assembly I do not think even at that point, had the government proceeded reasonably, the matter would have been capable of resolution. But the government of course continued this bullying, aggressive approach. They forced the bill through this chamber. In the other place the government refused to pair a known opponent of the bill. They then kept the house sitting through the night into Easter. They tried to bully the bill through the Parliament and of course they failed—as they should have, as they deserved to do.

Now we have a new bill, a bill that will not be implemented until next year at the earliest, a bill that is not in any way urgent, but again the government has not only set aside the accepted practices of this house but, far more importantly, set aside the opportunity for the community to have a say about this legislation before it is dealt with by this house by concealing the bill until the last possible moment. It could have been brought in last week, it could have been brought in in March, it could have been brought in in February, but it was not. It was concealed, and now the government are trying to ram it through with as little scrutiny as they can achieve. And I will tell you what, I will guarantee there will be no consideration in detail on this bill. I really would like to ask members opposite, though, ‘Why are you really so scared of allowing the public to scrutinise this bill? What are you trying to hide?’. It is absolutely disgraceful.

The minister suggested yesterday there had been consultation. The fact is the volunteers’ representatives were briefed this week. They have had no time to consider the views of the membership. They have had no time to allow proper input into discussion on the future of their organisation—and it is their organisation. It is an organisation for the volunteers.

We know that Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria issued a media release last week on the basis of the first-reading speech because, like everyone else in the state apart from the cabinet, they were not aware of what was in the bill. They indicated last week that they were continuing to caution the government that the proposed changes would weaken rather than strengthen service delivery capability for urban growth areas, that it would have the same problem for the surge capacity support for regional Victorian major statewide disasters—and goodness knows there have been enough of those in the last 12 years—and that it was also in direct contradiction to the learnings and findings from the 2009 Victorian bushfires royal commission. That is the view of the volunteers.

I have a couple of points on some of the detail in the bill. The government talked at length about response times, and the then minister was not above bagging the results in particular areas and, by inference, particular brigades. This bill is not at all about response times. The current CFA model allows the CFA to work with local volunteers and station career firefighters at any station. That opportunity is under threat. The current model allows for integration. In my own patch, Mornington is an integrated station, and it works well with those volunteers—well, it has up until recent times in any case. They have worked well with Mount Martha, with Mount Eliza and with Moorooduc. This bill is about separation; it is about undoing that integration. As one of my colleagues said earlier today, it has the risk of increasing division.

Finally of course, there are the issues with the Firefighters Registration Board, the four people who will decide who is fit to hold the office of firefighter—one appointed by the minister and the other three effectively appointed by the United Firefighters Union. This is a disgraceful, partisan attack on our volunteer firefighters and an attack on a proud organisation that has served this community incredibly well. It is a blatant abuse of the power of government to advance the interests of a tiny minority at the expense of a very large majority. It is as near a corrupt use of the tyranny of the majority as I have ever seen in this place. Should this legislation pass, and that unfortunately appears likely, this bill and the tactics that have been used to force it through will come back to haunt this government.

 Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (16:39): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. Can I begin by firstly congratulating the minister for her work and her determination to keep the community safe and our firefighters, career and volunteer. The fact of the matter is that the minister is committed to making a stronger volunteer organisation. I thank her for that, and I know the people of Geelong thank her for that.

We made a commitment going into the last election to reform our fire services, and that is exactly what we are doing. We are determined to do that. The people of Victoria voted us in. They voted us in knowing that these reforms were on the table. We had a resounding win. I know the member for Frankston was attacked earlier by those opposite, but he increased his margin at the last election. It appears to me that those opposite are making up their own history. They are making up their own history about what happened last year at Easter time when these reforms should have gone through the upper house and did not because of the dirty tricks played by those on their side. In some ways you could look at that as a positive thing, because we then went to the election and had a resounding win.

So what does that say about those opposite? I know during the election period I was out on street stalls talking to firefighters and volunteers—both career and volunteer firefighters—and talking to Liberal voters, who said they would never vote Liberal again after what they did in the upper house. It was not just one or two; there were many people who made those comments, because they were so appalled at what those opposite did in relation to this major reform. Everybody knows that we need it. We know that it is about community safety. We know that it is about keeping our firefighters safe, whether they are career or volunteer. These reforms have to happen, and so I am delighted that this has come into the chamber. It is well overdue. It should have happened a long time ago. We are operating in a system that was built, I think, in the 1950s some time, and there has been this resistance to change. We now have this fantastic opportunity to see this change.

As my friend the member for South Barwon indicated earlier, when you talk to family and friends who are involved as volunteers in the CFA or are career firefighters, they tell you what is going on within their ranks. We know that people want this over and done with. Firefighters, volunteer or career, want to see an end to this. They want to see the reforms, they want to see improvements, they want this change to happen and they want it to happen now. People are getting tired of waiting. The fearmongering and misinformation that has come from those opposite has been absolutely appalling. They are making up their own stories. There is no truth in a lot of what they are saying over there. It is unbelievable the stories and misinformation they are putting out there, and they are again trying to build up that fear in our community right now that the bill is back in the chamber. Well, I do not think they will be very successful. I am moving around my community, as I do, and nobody has any concerns about this bill being tabled. I know the member for South Barwon feels the same. The member for Bellarine, who happens to be the minister, feels the same, as does the member for Lara, the other neighbouring electorate.

I think we have to see this bill passed. People are over it. The scaremongering has had a major impact on our volunteers and our career firefighters. They are devastated about a lot that has gone on over the last couple of years—things that never should have happened. We know the stories that they have put out there to try to gear up opposition to these major forms. They might have had some significance or impact on those communities back in the earlier period, but when I talk to community now they do not believe them. I think it is clear, given some months ago we actually won the election with a resounding result. So those opposite might want to think about what they are doing and what they are saying to their community. This scaremongering has got to stop. My recollection is they won the 2010 election with the same sort of scaremongering, and the federal government has just won the election on scaremongering. This is what these people on the opposite side are doing continually, and they have cut $66 million, as the member for South Barwon pointed out. So it is an absolute disgrace that they continue along this line of scaremongering, which is doing nothing for their community. You are certainly not supporting your community out there and acknowledging that we do need this major fire reform.

I know in my electorate the regional growth around Geelong has been astronomical, and I know the member for South Barwon sees the same thing—there are major developments going on in his electorate, as there are in mine. We need the firefighters—whether they are volunteer or career it does not matter—to be able to respond when there is a fire. People do not care who is driving the truck as long as they are a firefighter turning up to put the fire out, whether it is at their home, whether it is at an industrial estate or whether it is at a commercial building. They are not going to ask that person whether they are a volunteer or a career firefighter. They just want to see that truck turn up in plenty of time to put that fire out. So it is not an issue for many, many people who is driving that truck or who is on the truck to fight the fire; it is about getting them there and getting them there with the best possible resources that we can provide as a government.

Our firefighters currently operate under systems and structures that have not changed since the 1950s, and it is clear that these services need to be modernised to meet the growing demands of our community. This legislation should already be law, as we know.

The bill focuses on the introduction of the presumptive right to compensation for firefighters who have one of 12 cancers, have served for the requisite number of years and meet other qualifying requirements; the establishment of Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) headed by a fire rescue commissioner; the establishment of a strategic advisory panel which will provide strategic advice to the fire rescue commissioner; the establishment of a new FRV fire district which will replace the metropolitan fire district and redraw the boundaries of the district to include growth areas in Melbourne as well as major regional centres; the establishment of a new fire district review panel which will be responsible for reviewing and advising future changes to the district; the transfer of CFA career firefighters, instructors and practical area drill operators to FRV; the establishment of a process for secondment agreement so that the key operational staff can be seconded from FRV to the CFA to meet the CFA’s statutory and operational requirements; the establishment of a Firefighters Registration Board to assess and register FRV employees who are seconded to the CFA; and the establishment of an implementation monitor responsible for monitoring the implementation of the reforms over a 10-year period.

More than that we need systems that honour the hard work and commitment of our firefighters and acknowledge the significant risks and dangers that they face daily. This bill delivers to our career and volunteer firefighters a presumptive right to compensation for cancer claims arising from their service. This is an important reform that will make the process of applying for compensation less onerous for many Victorian firefighters. These laws recognise the invaluable service provided by firefighters and the dangerous work that they do, and I think it is just fantastic that this government is acknowledging that. The minister has worked hard on this bill, and I am very pleased that we are able to implement that. This bill will ensure that Victoria’s career fire service is modernised with clear accountability structures to meet the needs of a growing and vibrant state. Of course that includes areas such as the Geelong region. It also restores the CFA to its roots as a community-based, locally responsive organisation made up of dedicated volunteer firefighters and makes it a stronger organisation, and it ensures that these volunteer firefighters— (Time expired)

 Dr READ (Brunswick) (16:50): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. I would like to start by acknowledging the work done by Colleen Hartland, who was the Greens member for Western Metropolitan Region in the other place for over a decade. Colleen was a strong advocate for presumptive compensation rights for firefighters and championed this matter for many years. She brought a private members bill that proposed to establish such a scheme in 2011, which was rejected by the then Liberal government, and she has continued fighting for the introduction of presumptive compensation in Victoria since then.

When moving that her private members bill be referred to a committee in 2013, Colleen said, and I quote:

… this bill goes beyond party politics. This bill is about getting adequate WorkCover compensation for firefighters who contract cancer and follows precedents successfully set in other jurisdictions, including the commonwealth. It is about protecting those who protect us …

So it is a pity that politics last year has resulted in us lagging behind the rest of the country in introducing a presumptive compensation scheme for our firefighters. These changes are long overdue, and I know that Colleen and many of her fellow campaigners will be very pleased to see this bill come before the Parliament today.

By now it is very clear that there is an established link between firefighting and certain types of cancer. By chance, really, an authoritative meta-analysis on the subject has literally just been published in the International Journal of Cancer this year, and it shows risks elevated to around, say, 12 per cent for colorectal cancer, 15 per cent for prostate cancer, 20-odd per cent for thyroid and melanoma cancers and up a third in testicular cancer; and also elevated risks in some but not other studies for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, pancreatic cancer and pleural mesothelioma. That is a lot of cancers. Many of those are virtually untreatable—for example, pancreatic and mesothelioma—or have high mortality rates. If you have read other mortality risk figures that are different to this, that is because this is a synthesis of about 27 studies and it has just averaged all of the results. A lot of those studies will have been in different countries with different types of people fighting different types of fires. You can imagine that the risks associated with fighting, say, a bushfire in a haystack might be different to the health risks involved in fighting a fire in a building made of all sorts of plastics and flammable cladding and chemicals we have never heard of. So that explains some differences in the risks between studies, but what is not in dispute is the increase in risk. If you want to work this out, the 34 per cent increase in the risk of testicular cancer—and let us assume that that figure is the truth—would mean that one quarter of testicular cancers in firefighters were due to their occupation. That is how you would interpret those figures.

But the difficulties in proving causation with this kind of epidemiological evidence means that firefighters’ claims for workers compensation were in the past often rejected. So we are pleased that this bill is finally introducing presumptive compensation for firefighters who develop particular types of cancer. In a presumptive scheme, firefighters diagnosed with cancer will no longer have to prove that their cancer was caused by the firefighting. It will simply be presumed that the cancer was caused and that they are entitled to compensation. The scheme will also take into account exceptional exposure events—the September 11 event would be an obvious example—so that firefighters who have attended such an event will still be entitled to presumptive compensation if they do not otherwise meet the qualifying period. The qualifying periods are aligned with those in place in other states’ schemes.

Our emergency services personnel play such an important role in looking after all of us. They are exposed to danger as part of their work when the rest of us just run away from it, so it is our role to look after them. Considering the delays brought about by the Good Friday affair and everything else, I support the measures to get presumptive compensation law as soon as possible. That explains why we are supporting this legislation this week. We are keen to see this adopted as soon as possible, and for that reason the Greens will be supporting this bill.

 Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (16:54): It is a pleasure to again rise on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019, and it has been a journey to this point in time once again that has seen significant politics and significant heartache throughout Victoria in our fire services. This has been a testing and trying time for those people—professionals, volunteer and career firefighters, who do our state the utmost service each and every day keeping our communities safe.

There has been a lot of bloodshedding from this process of getting to this point in time. Sadly a lot of that has been based on mistruths, misinformation, fear and the lack of integrity from numerous participants who would rather choose political expediency over the interests of their community and the safety of their residents and their constituents. But in this place we always come in with the hope that when people put up their hand and they take the oath or affirmation they will always defend the interests of their communities. When you have overwhelming evidence that says that residents are put at risk based on the current structure of our fire services, the notion that you would embark on damaging and political campaigns that damage communities, split families and hurt firefighters more broadly is truly extraordinary.

But it is worth reflecting on how we have come to this point. People have mentioned Good Friday, but what is more telling is the categorisation of career firefighters, who are indeed United Firefighters Union (UFU) members as well. Something that I have noticed across discussions in this place and in speeches that have been made is the demonisation of these heroes—these people who risk their lives and suffer along the journey with post-traumatic stress disorder from what they see and the support that they provide to our communities. The shadow emergency services minister talking quite disparagingly about the separation of volunteer and career firefighters as if they are segregated or something to be feared or something that is poorer in our state is very disappointing.

But there is form in this place, because of course during debates on the last bill we saw some pretty horrible statements about career firefighters and Black Saturday. It required the then shadow minister and now shadow minister and member for Gembrook to publicly apologise. Then again we saw through that journey the Good Friday pairing debacle and the Leader of The Nationals again saying how proud he was to defeat presumptive rights legislation in this state. Once again we saw rank politics getting in the way of the protection of firefighters and communities. That is the real, sad, telling truth of where we find ourselves today.

There is one more kicker in this story. There is one more thing that we need to reflect on, and that is the ‘Hands off the CFA’ campaign. Now, anyone across this Parliament takes a political party at face value—the issue that they put forward and the debate that we have in our democracy and in this Parliament—but when we saw those opposite try to raise money to siphon funds into their pockets to line their next campaign on the back of fear and misinformation, then we knew really what the truth was in this debate. We knew that it was never about safety. It was never about ‘saving the CFA’. It was about political expediency. It was about securing the election of a Liberal government in 2018. Well, the Victorian people made their decision. This was the most hypersensitive and most exposed campaign through the 58th Parliament. The result of the election was the affirmation that safety rather than fear, protection of community rather than rank politics, was going to be the way forward in our state.

We did not want to debate this bill during the fire season because our dedicated firefighters were serving our communities. I reflect on Bunyip. The Bunyip State Park fire, for the affected communities throughout Baw Baw shire and Cardinia shire, was a significantly challenging time. My wife’s family live in Gembrook, and consistently we were tracking the mapping, which you do when you are on a fire risk. It is the screenshot every half-hour to see the expansion of the fire front. What we saw—and this is telling across the board—was an incident controller put in place and every available resource, be it career, volunteer or community, all fronting up in the name of community safety and protection. And they are the best elements of our firefighters. Because whether you are a career firefighter or a volunteer, the professionalism that they put forward each and every day in the protection of our communities is truly inspiring.

I think the member for Rowville might have mentioned this and reflected before on how members will go back to their communities and front up to them about changes that might occur. Well, I put this to the member for Rowville, who I have served on a committee with: come out for a cuppa at Edithvale. Take the politics out of this. Come with me to Edithvale fire station. Come with me, anytime, any day. I will get the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee out of the way. I will even shout the coffee. Come and talk to my crew, a full volunteer brigade in Edithvale—a full volunteer brigade with over 130 members, wonderful female participation and excellent leadership. And guess what? They are nestled around career firefighters and an integrated brigade. Mentone and Highett are MFB stations and they are in an ecosystem of fire protection in our community and they link in with crews at Patterson River, Springvale and Dandenong for any form of critical incident. That is what the ecosystem of fire safety is reflected in.

We have had senior people in Volunteer Fire Brigade Victoria (VFBV) leadership who are members of the Edithvale brigade, and that should not be lost on anyone. During this whole campaign—during the whole fear campaign and the fundraising—senior VFBV members, in the executive, who then presented evidence at Fiskville on behalf of volunteer brigades, were senior members of the Edithvale brigade, yet we saw past the politics and we saw opportunity because they have all existed already in that ecosystem. And despite our communities growing, they continue to protect and support others around them. And they are professionals; at Edithvale, in every sense of the word, they are professionals.

They have an emergency medical response vehicle as well out of there. Now, for anyone who does not know what that is: there was a piloted trial and Edithvale volunteer brigade was a part of that trial. They could be first to an incident and keep people ticking along before a mobile intensive care ambulance or our paramedics get there, and on occasions they are the first there. Volunteers who are stationed at Edithvale are ready to go, and this is the kind of professionalism in our ecosystem of emergency services.

So the challenge is that when this bill steps forward past this house maybe those opposite can reflect on a new era from the 1950s, from when the Country Fire Authority evolved—from the numerous reports and the numerous warnings that the Victorian Parliament has had about safety. We have had coronial inquests, we have had royal commissions, we have seen the fall overs, and when you do not have the proper standards and delivery times, lives are put at risk. And that is the real key here. Of course we need to be focused on surge capacity, and if Bunyip was any example of that—with all the agencies coming together to support those communities and the absolute heroism that was shown by every agency there—that is how everyone sticks together. In the absence of leadership across the Parliament we have had leadership at the grassroots level when critical incidents come forward. It is a chance to turn the page and turn it to a new era of firefighting in our state. This is the challenge that we put forward: that we step away from the politics, we step away from fear campaigns in communities and we lead now in a positive fashion to bring everyone together.

The reality is that the election is done and dusted now, and it is time now for us to put aside the combative nature and then go, ‘How can we empower our brigades?’. We will always be asking for more; we will always have a view of what we can do. But the notion that volunteerism will be destroyed in Victoria has not played out in any circumstance or in any of the reports and significant investigations in CFA over a number of years, and it will not play out now, because of the values and the ethos that are put forward by brigades like Edithvale, who work each and every day not just in our community to keep people safe and alive but throughout our state during critical incidents.

So that is the challenge: will we put forward rank politics into the 59th Parliament or can we rule a line under the deep divisions and bitterness that we saw, which even saw people trying to line the pockets of political parties, and those opposite, the Liberal and National parties, trying to profit off the fear and misery of that CFA dispute? That is the challenge.

The final thing I would reflect on—and I have mentioned it briefly—is that now is the time also for the shadow minister to stop demonising UFU firefighters. Enough is enough. Career firefighters do an incredible job. They are heroes in our community. This notion to keep beating up on them consistently, even with the example that was shown at the Bunyip Ridge state fire during Black Saturday—enough is enough. Show some integrity, rule a line under this, let us get this bill on its way and let us reform the CFA and Fire Rescue Victoria.

 Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (17:04): I guess it is with a heavy heart that I rise to join the debate on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019, and I have a bit of a feeling of deja vu, because it was quite some time ago—over 12 months ago—that we debated this bill. I find the circumstances that this bill has found itself to be in the house to be somewhat disturbing as well, with the Minister for Police and Emergency Services pushing this through for no apparent reason. We are not going to see this come into effect until August next year, so there is ample time for the department and the minister’s office to work through this and make sure that, if they need to do these changes, they go through at that point.

But I, like everybody on this side, have very strong and passionate feelings for the role of the Country Fire Authority, and I am very concerned about what this bill is going to do to erode not just the confidence in the CFA but the ability for them to carry out their work as best they can. Their spirits at the moment are particularly low, and I am again disturbed to see the number of people that come and seek me out to talk about their fears for the future of volunteerism in the CFA as time progresses, and to see people who have been so actively engaged in an organisation for decades. I see my father, having been a 45-year veteran of the Limestone fire brigade. People who are still young and active but who still may have done 20, 30 or 40 years are feeling ripped apart by this government and this legislation for many, many reasons.

I am proud to have been part of a government, a Liberal-Nationals government, that actually introduced the volunteer charter, and the volunteers were particularly excited to see this. That charter says:

Ensures the State of Victoria and CFA will commit to consultation with Volunteers about all matters which might reasonably be expected to affect Volunteers …

That simply has not been the case. We see a bill that is before us now that treats them differently in terms of presumptive rights legislation. The career firefighters will have access to particular legislation for certain diseases that the volunteer firefighters will not have. As has been said previously, we have the same fire, the same smoke and the same cancers in some instances, and I think it is extremely discriminatory not to include the volunteers in that. That was one of the reasons we sought in the last Parliament to split this bill so that we could deal with the presumptive rights legislation quite separately from the reorganisation of fire services in Victoria. Very disappointingly the government did not take that up.

We also went to the effort of introducing a private members bill to bring this presumptive rights legislation forward because, make no mistake, this is something that we support for career firefighters and certainly for volunteer firefighters. We see some types of fires—industrial fires, for example—where firefighters are going in and sometimes it is not exactly known what the nature of the fire is or what the cause of that fire is. I think this is reasonable, but I do not think that for other types of fires we should be discriminating against the volunteers.

We have seen a debacle, a sad situation actually, in how this has been managed over the last number of years, with the former Minister for Emergency Services, Jane Garrett, now in the other place, having the nerve to speak out and say that the bill that was going to be introduced was not a good thing for volunteer firefighters. We know what happened as a result of that: the axe came down on her. Peter Marshall did not like it. We have seen people within the departments—we have seen Joe Buffone, Lucinda Nolan, Peter Rau, all these people—that have been moved on from their roles because they had the gall to speak out and to say that this legislation was not doing the right thing by volunteers.

I want to touch on the nature of integrated stations, because in some instances they can work and in others they do not. I find it quite distressing that volunteers in some stations are told, ‘Here’s the line. You don’t cross the line. You’re not allowed to use our kitchen; you can use that kitchen out there. You’re not allowed to come through this door; you’re allowed to come through that door’. Volunteers report these issues time and time again. People who are not even speaking to each other although in close proximity bring this up, so we know that it is actually true. With that sort of culture it makes it very difficult to actually move forward. We very much have to consider a culture in an organisation, and the culture in an organisation is very difficult to change. We have got this culture now that is being driven and being developed through the government’s giving all to the firefighters union and taking all from the CFA volunteers.

I want to touch on the Fire Services Registration Board, which will comprise four people who can decide who is fit to hold the office of a firefighter. Now, our concerns are the nature of the people that are going to be filling these roles, be it as a nominee of the minister or of an industrial body, such as a senior firefighter from the United Firefighters Union. We have got all of these people who are going to have the UFU at the core of their being who will be making the decision about whether someone can be a firefighter or not. We will see, I am sure, that someone who has been a CFA volunteer for a long time—a group officer or someone who has worked in that group—who wants to make that move to being a career firefighter will be looked at negatively by that registration board because they have been a CFA volunteer. There is every likelihood of that occurring.

I draw on experience here. I had a role in government quite a number of years ago where there was a small panel who could determine which providers within their profession were able to do a particular lot of work. They would not let anyone else in. They thought they were the experts, they knew it all, and it was a very closed shop. I worry that this sort of thing will bring about a very closed shop. It was very difficult, because the culture within that group was that, ‘We’re the experts. We know it all. We know who we’re going to keep out. No-one is as good us, so we’re going to make sure that no-one has that opportunity to come in’. I find that quite disturbing.

Another thing that I find disturbing about this bill before the house is that the minister has said it is the same bill that we have seen previously. We in the lower house know that once it passed through here it went to the upper house and a number of amendments were incorporated before it was voted on and voted down at that time. In the lower house we did not see those amendments. They may have been on the parliamentary website, but the fact remains that we did not know one way or another for certain whether what we were going to see this week was going to incorporate those changes or be the original bill. There are a number of people in this Parliament who were not here last time, and I think that they should have the opportunity to understand this legislation. The fact that we are debating this after having seen it almost 5 minutes ago, not a lot more than 5 minutes ago, I think is really appalling and a real blight on the government and their attempts to hide what is going on and not be transparent.

I support the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Gembrook in his shadow role and hope that this bill is not successful. I will say again that the coalition very much supports presumptive rights legislation. That is not part of the argument. But it is the review into the operations of the fire services and the implementation process that are our big concern.

 Mr EREN (Lara) (17:14): I am also pleased to be speaking on this very important bill, the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. This bill replicates the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2017. Unfortunately, obviously, because of Bernie Finn and Craig Ondarchie this bill could not proceed through the upper house and it is a year wasted for all those firefighters who could have taken advantage of this very important bill that is before the house today.

The bill incorporates amendments that were agreed to at that time. Can I just put on the record that we as a government respect and thank all of those firefighters in our state, both career and volunteer. Obviously the bills that come before the house are all important, but this is of particular importance. We do not have many natural disasters, but one thing we do have is devastating bushfires. If we are not prepared as a community, if we are not prepared as a government and of course if we are not prepared, then devastating things occur, as we have seen with the devastating fires that have occurred in the history of our state, not to mention the devastating fires in my area of Lara and Little River. It is only 50 years ago that that fire occurred, and it nearly wiped Lara off the map. I want to thank my local CFA brigades out there in Lara, Corio, Anakie and Lovely Banks and of course Little River, whose boundary I share with the Treasurer, the member for Werribee.

In this state we are seeing a surge in our population. There is no question that the population has increased tremendously over the last 10 years in particular and is growing rapidly. Why wouldn’t you want to live in a state where the economy is strong, where there are good meaningful jobs available and of course where it is a great place to live, work and raise your family. But what comes with that are some pressures, and I know that from my electorate particularly. My boundaries used to go to Wyndham Vale in Manor Lakes, but because of population growth I have now moved to Little River and come into Geelong. I know that growth corridor is growing at a faster rate than any other area in the nation—in Wyndham. So clearly some structures that were set in place in relation to our firefighting services were from the 1950s, and if the structures do not get changed, if we do not monitor them as a government, if we do not fine-tune how we provide that service and how we provide a service to our communities and if we are not careful, then we could have further devastation through bushfires going forward. That is why we see this important bill coming before the house, and we would have hoped that the opposition would have learned from the last election.

I know my good friend the member for Mordialloc has mentioned some of the politics that went on in relation to the opposition leading up to the last election. Indeed they tried to make the most of this situation, which is very sad for them. It did not work. I think people saw through the politics of this very important issue, and clearly we have come a long way in terms of reuniting some of those areas where they were deliberately divided by those opposite. Clearly this bill before the house will go a long way to making sure that we have the best fire services in the country, if not the world.

Our firefighters are the best in the world. There is no question of that. When expertise is required, whether it is during bushfires in California or indeed in other parts of the world where there are devastating bushfires, they seek some advice and want some help from our firefighters in Victoria. That is why it is imperative that we as a government provide the best resourcing that we can. Those opposite have shed crocodile tears for the CFA and the firefighters, both career and volunteer, but they are the party that cut the funding to the firefighters in their time in government. They have not learned much at all in relation to the politics of this. We had a resounding win at the last election—we are humble about that, there is no question—and that is an indicator of how the community supports us broadly. Of course one of the reasons that they voted for us is that they can trust us with their firefighting services. That is why we have been given another term in government.

The most important thing in relation to some of the areas that I look after in the electorate of Lara is not just the farmland, it is population growth, which has doubled over the last 15 years in terms of the growth that is occurring in Lara, particularly in the suburb of Lara. Lara also has some very important infrastructure, like Barwon Prison, Avalon Airport, Viva Energy and of course other very important assets that we need to be mindful of and protect. Of course we protect communities, but we also protect property in relation to some of that very important infrastructure that we have in my electorate particularly. That is why it is important that we provide a model of service to modernise our fire services going forward.

There is no question that some of the proposals before us today will modernise this. Some changes are occurring, and I will not go through them. I know that many of my colleagues on this side of the house have gone through extensively some of the changes to Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV). But I do want to particularly put on the record some of the presumptive rights. It is a situation where you are a volunteer out of the goodness of your heart—you are actually volunteering to protect your community. Of course time is the most important and precious commodity that any human being can have, yet you are volunteering your time and risking your life and limb, basically, to protect your community through being a volunteer CFA member. On top of that you are not given your rights if you contract some form of cancer which is directly related to the service that you provide to the community. That is extremely unfair. That is why, without mucking around, we want to stop the politics of all of this in this chamber—and indeed we will see it go on in the other chamber after the bill is passed through here—and get on with it. Let us protect these people that protect us. That is all we ask for. We have seen lots of politics being played out in terms of this important issue.

Prior to the 2014 election the Andrews government made a commitment to introduce presumptive rights legislation for firefighters who have contracted cancer. While evidence shows that a number of cancers can be caused by firefighting activities, under current laws firefighters have to go to great lengths to prove that firefighting was the cause of their cancer. The reforms in this bill will ensure presumptive rights to cancer compensation to all firefighters—career and volunteer—on an equal basis. This will mean that an eligible firefighter claiming compensation for these cancers will not have to prove that firefighting was the cause of their cancer. It will be presumed that their cancer was caused by their firefighting duties, and they will have an entitlement to compensation. This scheme will deliver equal access to both career and volunteer firefighters. It will apply to firefighters who have developed cancer because of their service and have been diagnosed since 1 June 2016.

We have looked at a number of models in Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland, and we think as a government we have come up with the best model going forward, which is the fairest for our firefighters, who deserve nothing but the best.

We have invested extensively in our services, as opposed to what the other side did when they were in government. The proof is in the pudding. We are proud of the investments we have made. We have invested literally tens of millions of dollars, and we will continue to invest a lot more. Our government has committed to a $100 million support package to strengthen and enhance the CFA. We have created a $56.2 million CFA support fund to strengthen volunteer recruitment and retention, increase training options, expand brigade support and develop brigade leadership.

We are also investing $44 million in a station building and upgrade program for current integrated stations and volunteer stations. We will continue to provide as a government investments into these very important areas, because we understand the importance of these services that are being provided to protect our community, to protect our property and to protect lives. So many people depend on volunteers. Let us just stop the politicking that is going on around this, get together behind this legislation and get it through both houses so that the firefighters can benefit from this very important bill.

 Mr WAKELING (Ferntree Gully) (17:24): This has certainly been a shameful week in the Victorian Parliament. I rise to debate the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. Certainly it saddens me to see the way in which this government has handled this piece of legislation and this entire issue. This week we have had two bills that have been second read and rammed through the Victorian Parliament in an unprecedented manner—one that I have never seen in the time that I have served in this house. The only occasion I have ever seen bills rammed through Parliament is when there has been an arrangement where both sides of politics understand that there is a pressing issue.

Can I say, before I deal with the merits of this case, that I attended the bill briefing afforded to the opposition this morning. Let us remember that the bill was given to the Parliament yesterday, we had a briefing this morning and we are debating the bill today. I asked the obvious question: what is so pressing that we need to ensure that this bill is implemented to ensure that there is delivery of Fire Rescue Victoria? The advice that was provided to the opposition was that there is nothing pressing in the Victorian Parliament to ensure that this piece of legislation is implemented to ensure the establishment of FRV, because it is going to take at least 12 months to establish this new body.

One needs to ask the obvious question: if that is the case, why is this government ramming this piece of legislation through the Victorian Parliament? We know Bill Shorten told the Premier, ‘Whatever you do, don’t present a budget before the federal election’, and, ‘Whatever you do, don’t present Fire Rescue Victoria before the Parliament before the federal election, because it’s going to hurt my chances of being elected’. History will tell us that despite the actions of the Premier to deliver for Bill Shorten, Victorians and Australians saw through him and we saw the re-election of the Morrison coalition government at the past federal election.

This is a shameful piece of legislation. Those opposite talk about protecting workers with respect to cancer legislation. It was this side of politics, both in this Parliament and the previous Parliament, that sought to introduce legislation to the Parliament to provide for cancer protection. Those opposite lecture this side of the house on playing politics with the health of Victorians. If they put aside their politics for one moment, that legislation which was proposed by the opposition would be law; it would already be implemented. But, no, the government saw fit to link that piece of legislation with this bill so that they could play political games with Victorian firefighters. So when we talk about politics, when we are talking about playing politics with Victorians, the government needs to look at itself.

I am very proud of the work that is done by firefighters in my own community—those that work in Boronia, those that work in Scoresby and those that work in Ferntree Gully—who have served our community extremely well. I am proud of those that have served for many, many years. Many of us can talk about family members, and I can talk about my father-in-law, who has given 45 years service and is a life member of his brigade and of the CFA. I know what it means on a Christmas Day to see my father-in-law leave the house to go and fight a fire. I know what it means to be a volunteer, and I pay tribute to those people, but this government is treating our volunteers with contempt. Do not just take it from me. I get this from the volunteers in Knox. I get this from the volunteers who work at integrated stations. I get this from volunteers who work at volunteer stations. I had the experience of hearing a shameful story of a volunteer who had to take time off to recuperate from being bullied by a permanent firefighter who accused him of not putting in an appropriate level of service when he was out on a fire. This is a volunteer. This is somebody who works full-time and who at night went out to fight a fire and was bullied by a permanent member.

Can I just say to those opposite who talk about politics that I am proud to say that our volunteers do a fantastic job, and I for one will stand up for volunteers in Knox and their interests. When I receive emails from people in the community who attack the work of the volunteers of Ferntree Gully, that is shameful, because they—

A member interjected.

Mr WAKELING: Of course it is awful. I take up the interjection from the minister because I would be more than happy to read those people’s names into Hansard, because it is shameful that people would attack the work of our volunteers.

This government has not spelt out any argument to explain why the work of our volunteers needs to be ripped apart through the introduction of this piece of legislation. Our volunteers do a fantastic job in my community. This government is seeking through this bill to attack our volunteers without providing any argument to explain why they need to be attacked, and that is shameful. I will stand up in this house on behalf of Knox volunteers and say, ‘I will stand with you’. I only hope that the other members—the member for Rowville and the member for Bayswater—will stand up in this house and say that they will stand with their volunteers. I have heard the contribution from the member for Rowville and I know that he will support his volunteers within the Knox community. I will be interested to hear the contribution and views of the member for Bayswater.

I want to provide an opportunity to my other colleagues to speak on this important bill. This is shameful, and it is of grave concern that the government is seeking to ram this bill through the Parliament as it is doing on this occasion.

 Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (17:31): Frankly, I have to say enough is enough. This piece of legislation should already be law. We all know that laws which give all firefighters, career and volunteer, a presumptive right to compensation for specified cancers should already be in place. We all know that laws that are about modernising our fire services and affording better protection to our communities should have been passed last year, and we all know that the laws that support our firefighters and help them do the best job possible and make sure that they remain the best in the world should have been passed last year. But they were not, and we all know why. Everyone here can recall those pretty dreadful events which culminated on Good Friday 2018. Frankly it was quite an indictment on politics in this place, and I really hope that we never, ever have to relive something like that again.

But we are here. It is now 2019, and we have before us a fresh opportunity to show support for some of our most valued and respected members of the community—our career and volunteer firefighters. We have a unique opportunity now to actually show a unified commitment to modernising our fire services and to improving community safety for everyone—that is, for everyone across Melbourne and throughout our regions. So to those opposite, I implore you—and say that the time for division is over—to let us end the fighting and the scaremongering. Let us put community safety first, let us put the health of our firefighters first and let us get this bill through.

This bill is back before us. It is the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. I say ‘back before us’ because we debated this bill last year. It passed this house. It went to the upper house. House amendments were made. Those house amendments were passed. What did not pass was the final bill, and we have heard already about what happened with those two members from the opposition reneging on their commitment. It is now well and truly time for this bill to pass this house, and I would suggest to those opposite that it is well and truly time for them to support the progression of this bill.

I absolutely support, like all members on this side of the house, the reforms that are in this bill. It will provide a presumption for volunteer firefighters and career firefighters who are suffering from specified forms of cancers to claim compensation under the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 and it will reform our fire services in Victoria by promoting the role of the Country Fire Authority as a fully volunteer fire service and modernising Victoria’s fire services framework, particularly in our metropolitan areas.

I would like to acknowledge all of the people who have contributed immensely to the development of this bill and the reforms more generally. Firstly, I want to thank Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria and the thousands and thousands of volunteer firefighters throughout Victoria. Our fire services could not and will not operate without them. All Victorians owe a great debt to the dedication and commitment that has been shown by our volunteer firefighters for years and years. We have heard here already people referring to family members and friends. My grandmother and grandfather were lifetime members of the Upwey brigade, which I note just celebrated its centenary last year. Victoria has a long and proud history of volunteer firefighting. It is part of our community spirit. It is part of our psyche here in Victoria. We do not want to give that up. We want to see that emboldened, we want to see that protected and we want to see that supported for future generations.

I would like to thank the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and the Country Fire Authority for all their work, advice and contributions that have gone so far to helping shape these reforms. Thank you of course to the career firefighters. They have endured some really difficult times over the last couple of years, and I really hope for their sake, for their health and mental health as well, and for their families that the uncertainty will now be over and we can move forward to implement and modernise their fire service.

Thank you to the former Minister for Emergency Services, the member for Monbulk, and of course our current Minister for Police and Emergency Services, the member for Bellarine, neither of whom have wavered in their commitment to seeing through these important reforms, because they know that these reforms are absolutely necessary for our communities across Victoria.

I really see this as an historic piece of legislation. I think it is going to mark an important point in time for Victoria. We are going to modernise our fire services and do so in a way that really brings the best of what we have got with us. And of course it is absolutely well and truly time that this Parliament puts into law presumptive rights for career and volunteer firefighters to allow them to access the fair and equitable compensation that they deserve for putting themselves in danger, for putting themselves at risk and in harm’s way every single day of their lives in order to keep the rest of us safe.

I will go into just some detail on some of the reforms. I think this is valuable because we have heard over time how these reforms are said by those opposite to prejudice volunteer firefighters. That is not the case; that is not the case at all. Let us start with presumptive rights. Now under the current scheme firefighters are entitled to compensation if they have an injury, which could include cancer, and they have to prove that the injury is due to their work as a firefighter. The presumptive rights scheme in this bill reverses that. Under the proposed scheme, if a firefighter meets the qualifying criteria, it will be presumed that she or he developed cancer as a result of their firefighting work. The cancer types in this bill—there are 12 cancer types—are consistent with the cancer types in other jurisdictions, and that includes New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Unlike the Queensland model, which this bill is partly reflective of, our Victorian model offers much more flexibility for volunteer firefighters, and I think that is a really important point. So, for example, in assessing the qualifying period consideration of a volunteer firefighter’s attendance over the duration of his or her service will to be taken into account rather than on a year-by-year basis. But I think the most important significant difference comes down to this: our Victorian model includes a special consideration process that will apply for firefighters, career and volunteer, who do not meet the qualifying period requirement. So in other words, firefighters who have been diagnosed with a listed cancer who do not meet the qualifying period may still qualify for compensation under a special consideration process.

Obviously the second part of the reform, very much connected to the first, is the fire services reform. Presumptive rights and fire services reform are connected because they both address service and operation and ultimately community safety. We have 1220 volunteer brigades across Victoria and 38 integrated fire stations. The Patterson River Fire Brigade in my electorate is an integrated station with both career and volunteer firefighters. I have two volunteer brigades in my electorate, Carrum Downs and Skye, and I want to take the opportunity to thank those brigades for their ongoing work in my community, but also for the crucial role which they played in supporting major fire events, most notably the Bunyip State Park fires.

Most of the 1220 volunteer brigades will be unaffected by the changes in this bill, and I think that is important. They will be affected, though, in one very important way, and that is that the Country Fire Authority Act 1958 is actually going to be amended to specify that the CFA will be a fully volunteer firefighting service supported by paid staff when necessary. The bill enshrines the important role of CFA volunteers by inserting an additional responsibility for the CFA board to support the effective and sustainable recruitment, development and retention of volunteer officers and members to deliver capability in the CFA’s services. The Andrews Labor government will continue to fully support the CFA and our volunteer firefighters with investment, recruitment, trucks and resources.

I commend this bill. I urge those opposite to put aside politics on this important issue and to show their support for our firefighters, all of them, career and volunteer. This is so important, immensely important, from a community safety perspective. We need to adapt and change, and I commend the bill.

 Ms CUPPER (Mildura) (17:41): It is a pleasure to be speaking on this bill today in the house. I begin by acknowledging the incredible work that both career and volunteer firefighters do to protect our community. They are there in the worst of times when fire threatens our homes and when properties are lost, and they represent the very best of our communities. It is little wonder that a bill about an organisation which many of us feel so passionately about and which has been a proud cornerstone of our emergency services has elicited so much passion and concern. The CFA is an institution, and in many of the communities in regional and remote Victoria it is not just a fire brigade but a focal point for community cohesion.

This Sunday I will be attending the CFA’s family day at Ouyen. I will be taking my little boy, who has been promised a ride in a fire truck. Our CFA volunteers are heroes and demonstrate that heroism in ways big and small every day, whether it is saving lives from raging bushfires or making a little boy’s day by letting him be Fireman Sam in a big red fire truck.

This bill has merit. There is absolutely no doubt that presumptive rights compensation for firefighters is something that should be implemented. This important legislation will mean that a firefighter claiming compensation for certain cancers will not have to prove that firefighting is the cause of their cancer; instead it will be presumed that they contracted cancer because of their firefighting service and that therefore they have an entitlement to compensation under the WorkSafe scheme. No-one would deny this to our hardworking firefighters. It is a shame that the government has included the presumptive rights legislation in one package along with the other more contentious aspects of the bill, causing delay to this important scheme.

The other element of this bill focuses on a substantial rethink of the way fire services are structured and delivered across Victoria. This will see the creation of a new organisation known as Fire Rescue Victoria and the separation of career firefighters, who would become employees of Fire Rescue Victoria, from volunteer firefighters, who would remain as CFA members, making the CFA an entirely volunteer brigade.

I support the general intent of this bill. I think there is merit in restructuring our fire services to better meet the needs of the growing areas on the urban fringe that are currently underserviced by CFA brigades that were established long before Melbourne’s urban sprawl reached the area. I also support the notion that climate change is presenting us with more challenging fire situations that require a new level of response.

Unfortunately the public discourse and the political brawling around this bill have prevented the true intent and potential benefits of the bill from coming to the front. Instead, the bill has been politicised and has been used as a tool to create division between the country and the city, between volunteer and career firefighters and between unionists and non-unionists. The demonisation of union members, who are in fact hardworking men and women who are dedicating their careers to making our communities safe, which has been acknowledged by both sides, is a particularly unfortunate aspect of this debate.

Another unfortunate feature of the debate is that some of the most sensationalist fearmongering has come from political leaders in my own community. They have stoked the fires of division, promoting the false idea that the positions, influence and standing of the CFA within our community were about to be destroyed. They have suggested the bill would result in people in isolated parts of our community having to stand by while everything they care about burns. I have looked at the proposal, and I believe such hyperbole was false, misleading and highly counterproductive to our common goal, which is to make our fire services appropriate and adapted to modern circumstances and to keep our communities safe.

But regardless of how we got here, here we are. The amount of concern and fear among many CFA members in my community of Mildura and my lack of opportunity to build consensus on the ground means that I cannot in good conscience support this bill. Having only been elected in November and having this bill presented to the house today has not given me enough time to adequately consult and create a consensus position among the communities I represent.

A member interjected.

Ms CUPPER: I am not supporting it.

A member interjected.

Ms CUPPER: Okay, thank you. If I had had a chance to sit down with our brigades and have a sober, sensible discussion about the pros and cons, the risks and benefits, and reach some level of common understanding, my position might well be different. I hope that in the future I will have adequate time to consult on matters of such critical importance to my community, especially those which relate to matters of life and death. To rush through legislation of this nature is not only counterproductive to important community goals but is fundamentally undemocratic too.

 Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (17:46): I rise to speak briefly on this bill because I have spoken at length on it before in a sense. Most people will remember that I voted in favour of this bill when it was last before the Parliament, in the previous Parliament. I set out my reasons for doing so at that time, and many of them remain the same.

I spoke yesterday about how disappointed I am at the way the bill is being handled this week in this house, the way it has been forced on and will be guillotined tomorrow night. The bill was really only made available to members yesterday, and I think it is a situation that is really disappointing in terms of giving members the chance to read through it, check and understand the incorporation of the amendments that were hard fought for and achieved in the upper house and which I believe now make the bill a better bill than it was previously. It does seem to incorporate all of those amendments. I have had a look through it, and I have to say that I think it is a better bill than the one that passed through the house last time.

But haven’t we seen so much go on in this place and outside in our electorates in relation to this bill? I have seen politicians standing with CFA volunteers for a number of years now. It is all about ‘Don’t destroy the CFA’. I personally do not think this legislation will destroy the CFA, and if there is one thing I have heard out there loud and clear from volunteers, it is that they are over this. They want to move on. They want this dispute settled, and they want to be able to get some clarity about what their situation will be in the future. I can tell you that I will be one of the first people knocking on the minister’s door if volunteers in my electorate are disadvantaged in some way, if they do not get the training they need, if they are not getting the resources they need or if they are being in some way marginalised or treated with disrespect. I think this whole thing comes down to a need to change the culture right across both organisations and to ensure that there is a lot more respect in the debate.

In the Shepparton district we have one integrated station, so for all of those other CFA units out there business will be as usual. But for the integrated station, there is no doubt that there are some challenges around the integration. But it has been coming for quite a long time now. I am pleased to say that at their most recent meeting the volunteers voted 17 to 1 to stay with the paid firefighters together in the new station, when it is built. They will be provided with the facilities they need to house their equipment and to make provision for female firefighters. There are a number of things that were raised with the minister, and we will continue to raise them to ensure that the new Shepparton fire station is a state-of-the-art building with all the resources it needs, but that it also incorporates the volunteers.

Shepparton is the size of city that needs volunteers as well. The paid firefighters in the Shepparton district are not able to do everything, so they will be called out when there is a fire. They are relied on constantly, and their trucks, their equipment and their volunteers will be used as needed. They have been able to work through that for quite a long time, and I have trust that they will continue to do so. As I say, if problems arise, then I will be the first to be knocking on the minister’s door about it.

I have to also say that this Andrews Labor government won the election with a resounding victory, and this was an issue at the election. I cannot see that they have anything but a mandate to do what they are doing here, and that is what they are doing. In the upper house they have also got an increased majority, and they will be doing what they want to do. That is the reality of it. They have the mandate to do it. It is my position to take a much more collaborative approach and to try to achieve better outcomes than to try to whip up angst and anxiety in our CFA stations around the region, which has been happening now for years and which has served no good purpose, because here we are: the bill will be passed, it will become law and we will need to look after and protect our volunteers.

One of the other things I would really like to see in the Shepparton district is much more diversity introduced into the CFA to achieve opportunities for many in our multicultural community and other members of the community, because let us face it, it has been a long-term male-dominated volunteer force, and there is great opportunity for more diversity, for more women coming in, and of course to incorporate more of our multicultural community. I am sure there is an appetite for that, and indeed our volunteers would welcome recruiting any new volunteers. That is always something that is on the agenda.

We know that throughout regional Victoria, and probably in the cities as well, volunteerism is not growing. It is very difficult to achieve the number of volunteers you need across a whole range of areas, and the CFA will be no different. So for them to open their arms more broadly to embrace a bit more diversity may well lead to a situation where people feel that they will be welcome to act as volunteers and join in.

The presumptive rights aspect of this legislation is also a critical issue and one that has now been delayed for so long, and while it has been backdated—and that is terrific—there have been so many people who have waited with, I do not doubt, major health issues and again a lot of anxiety around where they might stand. So it will be a welcome passage of that aspect of the legislation.

I have spoken about the Shepparton district and its position. I say no more at this time other than that I am concerned about the way the bill is being handled in this house. I am concerned that people should have the ability to speak on it. This is a representative democracy. Everyone should have the right to have their say and, ideally, more time to take this back to their electorates.

 Ms RYAN (Euroa) (17:53): I have to say that this is a terribly sad day for the volunteers of some 80 brigades across my electorate of Euroa. This bill is an absolute stain on the members opposite. It is a stain on those members who claim to represent country Victoria—the members for Macedon, Bendigo East and Bendigo West, the member for Yan Yean and the members for South Barwon and Geelong. This bill will be your shame, and you will have to live with the consequences of having voted for this legislation.

The Andrews government has trashed the volunteer charter, this charter which we legislated in this Parliament in the last term of government. It has trashed it by bringing this bill in with no opportunity to consult volunteers on what this legislation means for them. It has voted twice now against the introduction of presumptive rights legislation, legislation that would have given volunteers equal access to compensation—equal access to a scheme along with career and paid firefighters. And with this bill they risk community safety. On top of all of that, this year in order to pay for all of this they have cut the CFA capital budget by $40 million, and they are hiking the fire services levy to pay for it. This is Labor’s legacy, and this is how country Victoria will remember the Andrews government.

It is ironic that those opposite talk about parliamentary procedure when they have slammed this bill through in three days without adequate time to either consult or debate on it. This legislation is not about community safety, as they would have Victorians believe, nor is it about the safety of Victoria’s firefighters. It is about control and it is about payback. It is about payback to the United Firefighters Union (UFU), to a union that doorknocked more than 40 000 homes and that turned out hundreds of volunteers to the polling booths at the last election to get Labor Party elected.

If anyone doubts that, you do not need to take our word for it; you can take the word of these very many people, these fine men and women who have served the fire services and who have been forced out by those opposite. If you want to talk about playing politics with the fire services, have a look at a list of names that includes their own minister, that includes an entire CFA board and that includes people like Joe Buffone, Lucinda Nolan and Jim Higgins—the list goes on. There are almost 20 people who have been forced out of the fire services by those opposite, and they dare to suggest that we are the ones who are playing politics with this issue. And if you do not even believe that, take Jack Rush’s word for it, somebody who became synonymous with the CFA during his time as counsel assisting the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. When this bill was last introduced, this is what he had to say:

What this legislation does is cripple the morale of the CFA across the state. I see this as a political outcome, rather than an operational one.

From somebody who is not politically aligned, from someone who has stood his entire career alongside the CFA and for justice in this state, that is what he had to say. If the government truly believed differently, then they would not have delayed this legislation until after the federal election, nor would they have deemed it necessary to put it through in just three days without the usual time to consult. There are more than 3500 operational volunteers that have walked away from the CFA since those opposite started this war, and under this bill the thousands of volunteers who are members of those integrated stations in the suburban interface of Melbourne are now going to find themselves playing second fiddle to Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV). It also leaves questions over the chain of command. There is no clarity on who those volunteers will report to. They might report to the chief fire officer, but there is no clarity on the chain of command between FRV and the CFA in those integrated stations.

Part 8 of the bill establishes the Firefighters Registration Board. Three out of the four members of that board will be UFU appointments, and they are the ones who will have the ultimate sign-off on who is employed by Fire Rescue Victoria—not the chief officer, whose job it is to ensure community safety. The government says that this bill, that the creation of FRV, does not impact on volunteers and that the CFA is standalone, but then we have got clauses in the bill which clearly demonstrate that staff from FRV, who can only be employed if the UFU agrees to it, will then be seconded back to the CFA. So who gets control over who is employed to FRV? The UFU. The UFU is handed control yet again of the CFA by a slightly different mechanism.

One of the most insidious elements of this bill, I find, is the government’s decision to link compensation for firefighters to the passage of their changes to the fire services, which are clearly so divisive. The former Minister for Emergency Services promised firefighters that he would introduce legislation within 100 days to provide compensation for those who had contracted cancer, and when that did not happen and when Labor had the opportunity to vote for presumptive rights legislation they voted it down twice. I signed a pledge in front of CFA brigades across my electorate—Broadford, Benalla, Heathcote and Seymour—that I would only accept this legislation if it provided a scheme that was equal for volunteers and paid firefighters.

And what we have before us is a scheme that is anything but. Volunteers are required to meet a different onus of proof to paid firefighters under this legislation. Again I quote Jack Rush:

I can’t for the life of me understand why specific compensation legislation is part of the Bill to reform firefighting.

It’s got no relevance to [the] real object of the Bill. I’ve never know a Bill to be introduced that involves compensation together with reform of such importance.

I think it should be split. It’s crap.

I support the member for Gembrook’s reasoned amendment. This presumptive rights legislation should not be tied to these very, very destructive reforms.

My electorate contains some of the most fire-prone areas of the state. Not only are there scars of Black Saturday still across the landscape but there are mental scars across the many CFA volunteers who turned out that day. I can tell you that they oppose this legislation. This bill jeopardises our safety so that the Premier can simply pay back a union—so that the Premier can deliver the wish list of a union who turned out to campaign for him and to get him elected. It spits in the face of those volunteers across my electorate who have turned out time after time after time, who have put their lives on the line to protect both life and property. It should be rejected for that very reason. Those opposite cannot claim a mandate for this bill. They have no mandate for this bill. They have taken on a war with 30 000 volunteers in this state who deserve so much better than what they are getting.

I would like to end with the words of a CFA volunteer in my electorate, who sent this to me this evening. He said:

Personally I am hugely proud of my CFA service over 25 years, and proud of my fellow volunteers and the selflessness and commitment shown by them day in and day out. This legislation though makes me feel devalued and makes me apprehensive about the future of CFA and whether we will still have the surge capacity in the campaign fires for which we heavily rely on those large volunteer numbers from metropolitan Melbourne brigades. The legislation also makes a mockery of the Volunteer Charter and any commitment by government to consult volunteers. It’s a sad time. The UFU and Labor have pitted staff against volunteers in a dirty campaign of paybacks for the UFU.

They are not my words but the words of CFA volunteers out there who put their lives on the line to protect us, to protect life and property. This bill should be wholeheartedly rejected. Anyone who does not will have to live with that on their conscience.

 Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (18:03): I take great pleasure in joining the debate on this bill because reform is long needed. I speak as someone who represents an electorate that is wholly protected in its fire services by volunteers. They are highly trained volunteers, and I do not use language like ‘professional firefighters’ and ‘volunteer firefighters’. Every firefighter is a highly trained professional. The difference is there are career staff and there are volunteer staff. What I am very pleased about with this bill is that it gives all firefighters access to the presumptive right to compensation for firefighters who have one of 12 cancers. This is really important to me because my uncle Allan Radford lost his life about three years ago, and he firmly believed at the time of his death and in the lead-up to his death that the reason for the cancers that ultimately killed him were due to his exposure from his training as a volunteer firefighter at Fiskville.

Fiskville is a stain on the history of firefighting in this state. Successive leaderships papered over what had occurred there. It was a disgrace. I want to commend the members of the parliamentary committee for their attention to detail and the work that they did and those brave firefighters and their families and the people that lived on neighbouring farms that took the time to make submissions to that inquiry.

One thing that I always felt was disgraceful was that the then shadow minister barely attended any meetings and then when times got tough he resigned from that committee. The member for Gembrook is now again the shadow minister and he has put a reasoned amendment before this house. This is someone who did not care enough about career and volunteer firefighters, about the travesty that occurred at Fiskville, and it did not discriminate.

It did not discriminate whether you were a paid firefighter, a career firefighter or a volunteer. My uncle Captain Allan Radford was the captain of the Port Campbell fire brigade and he was the deputy controller of the Port Campbell SES unit. We spoke in this Parliament only recently about two dear friends of his who were also great volunteers alongside him. They served their community without fear or favour, whatever the uniform was that they had on.

I have myself as a firefighter undertaken training at Fiskville. I have been to Fiskville many times. I was the shadow minister during the period between 2010 and 2014 and I attended graduations at that time. I went to many graduations of career firefighters there when the minister at the time was the former member for Gippsland South and then Deputy Premier. I would be surprised—I was pretty disgusted—if he attended any of the graduations there and it was lucky if he sent anyone from the government. I happened to be there when the information came out about how bad it was. I was there for a graduation.

I had heard stories then but the stories I heard got scarier and scarier. A former colleague in this place, a former member of this place, Justin Madden—his in-laws had a farm next door and they died of cancers at that place. Those who now are saying that we should go back to the drawing board on this bill were happy for Fiskville to continue despite all evidence to the contrary. I do not think we will ever hear the truth. We will never get to the bottom of exactly how bad it was there, because of the poor record-keeping. It was appalling.

The United Firefighters Union were able to get out information about their members when records began being kept about their records of training there. I spoke to Euan Ferguson, who was the chief officer when this scandal broke publicly. I said, ‘What about volunteers, Euan? What about volunteers? When were records started to be kept for them?’. I think this was 2011, and he said, ‘Danielle, I’ve got to be honest, it’s only been about five years’.

This is the organisation that we are now trying to hold up and defend it to the nth degree and say that it was perfect. The CFA has not been perfect. There have been numerous inquiries into our firefighting services, and enough is enough. I am very pleased to see someone of the calibre of Michael Tudball, who I have served on strike teams with, who I know through his local government service, who I know through his work with outer suburban communities and who I knew as a board member. He has said the time is now, and so I support longstanding people like Michael Tudball who have come to that conclusion.

I actually think we cannot say, ‘Oh, this structure served us well’. Well, as a volunteer I have got to tell you it did not. I was a volunteer on Black Saturday. That structure did not serve me well. It did not serve the hundreds of volunteers on that day. It has not supported us well since that day. I pleaded with the leadership of the Volunteer Fire Brigades of Victoria. I said, ‘I don’t want to play politics with this’. I was in opposition. I said to the government, ‘I am pleading with you—I am pleading with you. Andrew Ford, stand up for the exposure that volunteer firefighters had on Black Saturday, whether it was to their physical health or whether it was to their mental health’. I never heard Andrew Ford say a word. And you know what he did? He put his hand on me, and he said, ‘Oh, Danielle, I know you’ve had some issues since the fires’—what a patronising put-down—‘but the blokes are alright’. And I said, ‘Andrew, they’re not. They’re coming to me for support because I’m the nearest thing they see—a woman in leadership, the local MP. They’re coming to me for counselling. Andrew, I’m not qualified’.

I got a letter as someone that was exposed to the most horrendous things on that weekend, searching house to house. Twenty-two bodies were in the road where I was, Bald Spur Road. I got a very small debrief on the Monday afterwards, a crew debrief, and then, seven months later, I got a letter from region 14 going, ‘Oh, by the way, we think you might have been exposed to something bad on Black Saturday. If you’re not doing too well, ring Nev Goddard’. I love Nev Goddard. He is one of my closest mates. He is another volunteer. He coordinates peer support throughout region 14. For that region, that staffed region, that management could not even assign a full-time person to support every volunteer—the hundreds of volunteers that had been exposed to God knows what.

And they certainly were not truthful with what they said to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. I am telling you now that the truth did not come out about some of those decisions that were made on that day. The poor decisions were not made by volunteers; they were made by management. We need to change this structure, and I would point out to those opposite that it was not perfect on your watch. You halved the operational funding to branches during your time in office—that was your support to volunteers. We will have clarity and we will have transparency, and money will be able to be spent on them in a new system. I commend the bill to the house.

 Mr NORTHE (Morwell) (18:13): I welcome the opportunity to provide a few comments on the bill before us this evening and this afternoon. Obviously the bill elicits many different opinions and conversations. Can I firstly put on the record my commendation for all firefighters; it does not matter whether they are career or volunteer. I have witnessed firsthand the bravery and courage of the men and women of the organisation within my community over a period of time, even as far back as 2006 as a newly elected member, at the Cowwarr-Toongabbie fires, where a number of homes were lost; at the Delburn complex of fires in 2009; in January, when again a number of homes were lost in the Boolarra area; and during Black Saturday of course, when not only homes but also unfortunately lives were lost. We had the Morwell mine fire in early 2014 and most recently the Yinnar South and Budgeree fires. So if anyone can attest to and express a sincere appreciation of the efforts of all firefighters, I can certainly do that this evening.

Firstly, on the bill itself I have to express my concern and disappointment about the inadequacy of the time provided for us to digest the bill, distribute that among stakeholders and consult with stakeholders about it. Obviously we have voted accordingly on that. It is very concerning that we have not had that opportunity. I appreciate the government’s point of view on it, but the reality is to not have the opportunity to go out and talk in detail to stakeholders about the content of such a significant bill is certainly not satisfactory from my perspective.

The bill itself has two major facets: the creation of a new organisation called Fire Rescue Victoria and obviously the firefighters presumptive rights compensation. Might I say I think the notion of combining what I would describe as two separate aspects of the bill is unnecessary and unwarranted, and previously when it has been before the Parliament I expressed my concern about that. The member for Gembrook has moved a reasoned amendment. I can certainly say that that is something I will be supporting. It is important, from my perspective and that of firefighters I have spoken to, that we separate those particular elements of the bill.

Speaking to the fire services reforms component within the bill, a number of questions and concerns have been raised with me over a period of time since the bill and the previous bill have been out in the community. I can say that I know many career firefighters and I know many volunteer firefighters. It is true, and it is fair to say, that there are different opinions and views with respect to the reforms that have been proposed. There are some that are strongly supportive of them, there are some that are strongly opposed to them and there are many that do not express an opinion.

My concern is that in particular the volunteer organisation would potentially see a reduction in volunteer numbers and capacity over a period of time. They are not my words; they are actually the words that some of the volunteers within my community have put to me. I will refer to that more comprehensively shortly.

In my electorate there are two integrated CFA stations, at Traralgon and Morwell. It would be fair to say that there have been some challenges there over time, and I have witnessed firsthand some of those challenges. It is really about how we provide a cohesive and effective fire service that is there to serve and protect our community. There have been many concerns expressed to me over the previous months and years about the CFA as an organisation and how people are actually feeling on the ground. There is a lot of disappointment and disenchantment within my community, particularly from a volunteer perspective. We have seen a bevy of resignations and sackings when it comes to ministers, CEOs and boards. It obviously does not gel well for a positive outcome when you are working in an organisation where those types of situations are occurring—where there are mass sackings and mass resignations.

In a local context there has been a lot happening in recent times. One thing I have certainly been supportive of is a new Morwell fire station. As I have mentioned previously, the Morwell fire station currently is an integrated station, but as construction is about to commence on that station we have seen some major concerns raised. In the Latrobe Valley Express of 2 May this year there is an article headlined ‘Brigade splits in Morwell’. The first couple of paragraphs of that article state:

Frustrated volunteer firefighters have voted to split from career fireys at Morwell and explore their options following months of ‘tension’.

Senior brigade members claim frictions between career and volunteer firefighters have intensified in recent months, and stem from ... the long-running industrial dispute between the United Firefighters Union and state government.

So it is not right to say that there are not issues out there; CFA members are feeling the pinch with respect to some of these issues around fire reforms. Indeed in the same article it refers to:

Morwell Fire Brigade chairman Peter Quinn who joined in 1976, said the relationship between staff and volunteers “had changed” in recent years.

He said the state government’s plans to transfer CFA career staff and integrated stations to a new body called Fire Rescue Victoria “lacked direction” and would mean an unknown future for volunteer members.

They are not my words; they are from Peter Quinn, who has been a member of the CFA organisation for some 43 years. There are other commentaries within that particular article that refer to the same.

On the other element of the bill, on presumptive rights compensation, I just find it ridiculous that we have the majority of members here, probably all members in this chamber, who support presumptive rights legislation, yet we cannot have a separate bill to pass it. It is just ridiculous. We respect and honour firefighters, and with regard to the 12 types of cancers that are referred to within the bill it would obviously make life so much easier in terms of not having to prove that you have those types of cancers when you are a firefighter. But I also remain concerned that there are different rules in this legislation that apply if you are a career firefighter versus if you are a volunteer. There seems to be some onus of proof that is still required by volunteers despite them potentially turning out to the same fires under the same conditions compared to their career counterparts.

I want to raise the issue of Cowwarr volunteer Rob Gibbs. Rob’s name will be familiar to many MPs, as questions have previously been raised in this chamber about his predicament and his efforts to receive support, from the Premier down. Rob has chronic myeloid leukaemia. He is a genuine, caring family man who has served and protected communities right across Victoria in various capacities over many years. His family, quite frankly, have been through hell, and his beautiful wife, Ann, has also had her own cancer battles. Rob believes, and it is the opinion of medical professionals—or some of them, as I understand—that his illness was contracted through the Morwell mine fire. The hurdles that Rob has had to endure to prove his leukaemia are an absolute disgrace. Within the legislation it states that one can only qualify for compensation post 1 June 2016. I note in the second-reading speech the minister refers to a special consideration process for firefighters who might not qualify or have attended an exceptional exposure event. I strongly support this provision within the legislation and particularly for the Morwell mine fire. Any firefighter, including the member for Frankston, who is here and who I commend for his efforts as well, and all firefighters who attended that particular fire should be eligible for exceptional circumstances.

I do say to the minister in closing that this man, Rob Gibbs, has been left to his own devices despite having leukaemia, which probably, most likely, in the version of events from medical professionals, came from the Morwell mine fire. We seek the government’s support to help this man and his family.

 Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (18:23): It is indeed a pleasure to speak on this very, very important bill. The importance for Victoria of our firefighters, both career and volunteer, with their selfless work is enormous. I would like to begin by acknowledging all firefighters in Victoria for putting themselves in harm’s way to protect our community and our great state. To them I say: thank you.

Victoria is the fastest growing state in Australia, and we need to ensure that the structural elements of how our fire services are organised keep up appropriately with that increased population and the demands of a modern Melbourne and a modern Victoria. Population changes mean that the boundaries of the MFB and the CFA need changing. Why is Springvale, near my patch, classed as country? The changes will come into effect only in the 2020–21 summer season. They will not impact in this year’s summer. There will be no job losses. The enterprise bargaining agreement currently in place with paid firefighters will remain until a new EBA is organised. The CFA becomes a purely volunteer-only organisation and Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) becomes a paid organisation. In that way we give the volunteers the respect and the dignity of an organisation that is there just for their service and their dignity. The bill does not degrade volunteer firefighters, as those opposite try to say. It in fact gives them equal rights in their workplace.

I will get onto a couple of the absolutely disgraceful lies perpetrated by the opposition a bit later in my contribution, but I am so proud of this government’s achievement in bringing this bill before the Parliament a second time. It is an all-important bill. We know the fire season has passed, but it will not be long before we come face to face with the next fire season. Had we not made some reforms, whether it be for this season or the one after, we would risk the safety not only of property but, more importantly, of lives across the Victorian community. To give our fire services the time they need to adjust to a new structure and to ensure the implementation of this legislation, we need a fairly reasonable length of time—12 months.

This bill will establish, as the minister said and as other speakers have said—Fire Rescue Victoria, which will cover existing MFB boundaries and serve metropolitan Melbourne, outer-urban areas and larger regional centres, which is only reasonable. These people need the same, consistent service that other communities have. These will be known as Fire Rescue Victoria fire districts. This structure will bring Victoria into line with most other states in Australia. This bill also seeks to bring the CFA’s 38 integrated stations into the new FRV organisation, bringing all the state’s career firefighters into one organisation, which makes absolute sense given we are doing the same for the CFA, with all volunteer firefighters being in the same organisation. The FRV will include the 450 extra career firefighters delivered by the Andrews Labor government.

This is not just legislated reform for us. We put our money where our mouth is; we put our investments where our values are. This government has already committed to an over $100 million support package to strengthen and enhance the CFA. We created a $56.2 million CFA Support Fund to strengthen volunteer recruitment and retention, increase training options, expand brigade support and develop brigade leadership, addressing exactly some of the issues that the member for Yan Yean—a CFA volunteer herself—talked about in her excellent contribution. We are also investing $44 million in a station building and upgrade program for current integrated stations and volunteer stations so that CFA volunteers are working out of safe and modern facilities that accommodate them and their equipment properly.

I want to pick up on some of the matters raised by colleagues on this side, including the member for Frankston in his excellent contribution. The fearmongering in this debate over the last couple of years by the opposition and some of their cheerleaders has been absolutely woeful. It has been disgraceful—absolutely disgraceful—even on this day by the member for Euroa, and given her senior position in the opposition she should know better. I was in the chair when she was talking about the Fire Registration Board and the number of appointees or ‘stats’, as she called them, by the union. She completely misrepresented the role of that organisation.

Let me refer to part 8 of the bill, as the member for Frankston did, which says clearly that the registration board will only be for employees of FRV—the new structure—paid and career staff only, not volunteers. She is completely muddying the waters, as the opposition has done for two years, and is causing such grief. We heard the member for Shepparton and the member for Mildura talk about the fearmongering that these people have expressed in their communities. Good public policy is not served by fearmongering and scaremongering. Good public policy is served by attention to detail, a conviction to your values and good service delivery. They have no idea how that is implemented, because they have never implemented good public policy, particularly not in 2010–2014 when they were in office.

I want to address the three big lies of the Liberal Party and the National Party. The first one is that somehow we are treating volunteers differently. Are you serious? The same 12 cancers will apply, the same length of service will apply. The only difference is that because there are many CFA members who are not operational—they admit that themselves—they will have to demonstrate operational service on a very, very low threshold, far more generous than Queensland and Tasmania. And we will make sure that that threshold is met very easily by CFA volunteers. So this is rubbish that they have perpetuated about a difference in treatment—same cancers, same length of service.

The number 2 big lie of the Liberal Party and the National Party is that somehow this bill was rushed. Oh my God! I have not heard anything other than this bill for two years in this place. This has been heavily contested in the Parliament of Victoria and heavily contested in the public. It has been on the Parliament’s website, for instance, since Good Friday last year. It has been heavily contested in the media. I have read the bill clause by clause in the Herald Sun. I cannot understand what element of this has been rushed. What element? This is the exact same bill that came before you—with the amendments, as the member for Shepparton said—so how on earth you think this is a rush—

Members interjecting.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: You could not make this longer if you tried, mate. And also there is a gross misunderstanding on the other side of how government operates. I do not blame them, because half of them have never had the honour of executive office. They think that somehow you can absolutely drive the entire bureaucracy to set up IT systems and heads of agreement and spend their time on a bill on an authorising environment that does not exist. We need the bill to exist as an act of Parliament to drive the investment by the public service into the entire organising of this thing. They have no idea. They think you can pass the bill one day and have operational new fire services of Victoria the next day.

Mr Edbrooke interjected.

Mr DIMOPOULOS: Exactly, member for Frankston—like the side letter. You know, this is not kindergarten; this is the fire services of the state of Victoria. Over 6.5 million people deserve better than just a 24-hour set-up tomorrow. This does not work that way. We need 12 months of implementation to get this right.

Apart from all that, even on the other side they have talked about experiences of firefighters who have died waiting for compensation, and now they are trying to hold it back again. There are too many firefighters and their families who have missed out, and we need to get this done today because we should have got it done last year when the opposition failed in its duty to not only honour an agreement that is as old as the Westminster system but also honour its own word and its own integrity.

The third big lie of the Liberal Party and the National Party is that somehow the unions are there for nefarious reasons. No, they are the workers’ representatives, and we consult the unions, as we absolutely should. By God, is that some strange concept to you? I will give you an example of consulting with unions. We proudly consulted the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation, and because of that consultation we came with up with nurse-to-patient ratios. Are you going to deny those? No. We consult the workers’ representatives because we value their contribution to public policy—that is why. You do not.

I have wasted too much time on the opposition, but I do want to finish on the following point. I am incredibly proud that this government has good leadership and excellent ministers like the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, the member for Bellarine, and the previous Minister for Emergency Services, the member for Monbulk, to shepherd such important legislation through not only the community but this Parliament. I commend their leadership, I commend the work that firefighters across Victoria, volunteer and paid, do and I wish this bill a speedy passage.

 Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (18:33): I rise to condemn the Andrews Labor government for this horrible piece of legislation in front of us today—so bad that it could not even see the light of day until yesterday. We get less than 24 hours to actually go through the bill, much of which was not introduced in the lower house and we have not been able to go through. The people on the other side have tried to fabricate that the bill was available. It has not been available. It was introduced yesterday. I think it is incredibly disrespectful to the community, particularly in the country areas that actually rely heavily on the volunteers.

Let me tell you: I have been in this role for three and a half years, and that whole time the volunteers have been asking me to stand beside them, stand with them and fight for them. They do not feel like they are being represented by a government that decides to wrap fire services reform up with presumptive rights legislation. Let us be clear: we want presumptive rights legislation, and I support the reasoned amendment put forward by the shadow minister for emergency services, the member for Gembrook. We want to see this.

We have a government in power at the moment who have voted this presumptive rights legislation down twice. And it is not equal. Do not let anyone tell you that there are equal rights for both the paid and the volunteer firefighters. It is totally disheartening for the volunteers, and they feel undervalued. They feel let down. I have had so many conversations with friends of mine who are farmers who have said, ‘Look, we’ll just get our own truck. We’ll do our own thing’. That is not what we want to hear. We have 140 years of history where we have refined things. Yes, I understand there can be improvements, but we do not want that attitude where people are actually saying they will not be part of the system. That is where we will see lives lost. That is where we will see dangerous activities that we do not want. We want this wonderful training that we see for all firefighters, both volunteer and career, who are professional in their role and who do the job that we need them to do—to protect our homes, particularly out in the country.

We are 5 hours from Melbourne—4 hours at Nelson, 4 hours at Portland and 3 hours where I live. We have not got the people to be able to fill jobs to be able to grow the region, so we rely on volunteers. When we had the St Patrick’s Day fires not long ago—it feels like not very long ago—I was at home. It was about 10.30 when we saw the fire front coming over towards our farm. The whole of the horizon was alight. I packed up the car and took my daughter and a girl from Holland who was staying with us, and the dog and the cat, and went in the car with all our clothes—with what we could grab—and headed into town. It is a 20-minute drive, and on the way into town, I swear to you, it was like I was on the Geelong–Melbourne road, seeing the amount of lights that were coming in the opposite direction. I have never seen that much traffic on Caramut Road in my life. It was all the guys and girls who were coming out from 40th birthday parties, from weddings—I cannot remember all the functions; there was an amazing amount of functions on that night—and they dropped everything and headed in the exact opposite direction from where I was going. They were heading into the fire front.

We will not have that surge capacity if we have volunteers who have lost the capacity to fight for what they want to do—volunteer their time, give of themselves. I have received a number of emails, and I want to just quote from a couple of them. This gentleman said:

… thank you for your unfailing dedication to us CFA volunteers. I am really very sick in the guts with this disgusting and callous performance of Daniel Andrews, the Labor Party and the UFU.

A member interjected.

Ms BRITNELL: This is a gentleman—give him some respect. He continued:

I have been a very active volunteer for 50 years and I have enjoyed every minute of that time and no doubt that is why I’m still part of a wonderful worldwide recognized organization. No Union should have the power to run this or any other organisation. Ask them why are UFU members entitled to cancer compensation no questions asked and volunteers have to show proof, we are just second rate citizens.

That man is a volunteer. He has been very involved. It is not only him that I want to quote from. Another gentleman also emailed me today, saying:

I don’t have all of the answers to the issues below but I would love to know the details …

Exactly, because we cannot find out; we only got the legislation introduced 24 hours ago. He then said:

… where is the money coming from for this expansion (our fire service levy?)—surely this will result in less for the volunteer CFAs as there is only so much money to go around.

We have so much need in our community to upgrade our services. The fire station at Bolwarra does not even have lights. There is so much we need to do. Volunteers are happy to give their time, but they need the equipment. We are not going to be able to afford more equipment with this situation we are going to find ourselves in. He continued:

Lastly the CFA will not be independent as our management will be unionised and seconded from the new organisation—not really independent.

And he is right, because the staff will be seconded to the CFA. So you only have one boss. Two bosses has never worked in my history of those sorts of examples.

Lastly, I want to quote from a fantastic gentleman from Portland, a former CFA board member and Portland volunteer, Lieutenant Frank Zeigler. He said:

Unless we’re going to change the fire services for the better, don’t change it at all.

What scares me—

he said—

there’s been little consultation.

That is the issue here. These are volunteers. Frank Zeigler was on the board of the CFA. He has been involved the whole way and he is saying there has been little consultation. He cannot believe it is being changed if it is not being changed for the better. None of us disagree with improvements and better situations, but ripping apart the CFA and only being able to do it by wrapping it up with the presumptive rights legislation is completely underhanded. If that does not tell you enough about the bill, I do not know what would. Why could the government not have introduced the presumptive rights legislation, like they said they would, within the first 100 days? They did not have to wrap it together in this bill. It just shows how disrespectful they are being and what they may be trying to hide. This bill is not what the volunteers are wanting and it will not bring integration; it will bring separation. The guys in Portland, who are all working quite well together, have had this thrust upon them. They said to me that it was like being forced into a divorce when you are actually in a happy marriage. They were the quotes those Portland fellows gave me a couple of years ago.

I am very, very disappointed that the government has pushed this so hard. They want to smash up what we have seen as one of the best volunteer organisations across the world. That is probably one of the things I have noted and found to be most remarkable about this role—that is, that people in our communities who are good, who are just wanting to give back to their community, virtually have to beg for the right to do so. If this is not an example of that, I do not know what is.

I will conclude, because I know there are other people who want the opportunity to speak, by saying that there is nothing we want to do more on this side of the house than to protect our volunteers and ensure they feel valued. We will stand by them and we will not continue to let this government destroy the CFA. They can change the legislation, but we will back our volunteers every time.

 Mr PEARSON (Essendon) (18:41): I am delighted to make a contribution on the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019. It was quite interesting to be in the chamber today when the member for Gembrook got to his feet to make his contribution. I listened to what the member for Gembrook said and I remembered very clearly the contribution he made yesterday. Now, the member for Gembrook yesterday said that he had great difficulty in dealing with the fact that the government had brought on this legislation and wanted to debate it today. He was arguing that he did not have enough time. When he got to his feet today, the first thing he said was, ‘It’s groundhog day’, because we were back where we were two years ago.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot turn round and basically say, ‘Oh, well, it’s all a great shock and surprise that you’re doing this’, and then come in here the next day and say it is just like it was two years ago. There are no surprises with this; there are no surprises at all. We made it absolutely clear that we wanted to reform our fire services, to drag them into the 21st century, and it would have been on the statute book but for the outrageous behaviour of those opposite when they ratted on a pairing deal in the other place.

Power reveals, as Robert Caro wrote in his fantastic set of biographies of Lyndon Baines Johnson—power reveals. When this bill went to the other place, a pairing arrangement was entered into. Pairing arrangements are entered into between the major parties, between the government and the opposition, to reflect the composition of the Parliament. What you saw happen on Good Friday was an absolute abomination. It was absolutely disgraceful conduct and behaviour by opposition members in the Council. It is probably not that surprising because the opposition, conspiring with the Greens political party, managed to kick out the Leader of the Government for an unprecedented period of six months. Those opposite have routinely torn up the rule book on parliamentary convention and procedure to suit their own political ends. That is what they did.

Mr D O’Brien: Like sitting on Good Friday.

Mr PEARSON: By sitting on Good Friday.

Mr D O’Brien: Like sitting on Good Friday. That’s a parliamentary convention, is it?

Mr PEARSON: Well, I would suggest to the member for Gippsland South that we have not had the gag and nor have we had the guillotine in the other place. The other place is a house of review, and the other house has routinely sat late at night. It has sat well into the wee hours of the morning. It has sat, I believe, if you go back to the Kennett government, on a Saturday as legislation was pushed through. That is the prerogative of that house, and under exclusive cognisance, as the member for Gippsland South would know, the chambers are separate but equal. It has always been that way. We did not seek to prevent the other place from doing its bidding or its ability to be able to consider these matters.

Mr D O’Brien interjected.

Mr PEARSON: The member for Gippsland South is going on about sitting on Good Friday. Well, you know what? We stand by our deals, we stand by our agreements, and if we say that we are going to have a pair agreement, we honour it. We do not turn around and protest that, ‘I need to have leave because of my religious beliefs’ and then come skulking back into the chamber at 11.30 to defeat a piece of legislation that should have been passed. I respect the member for Gippsland South and I know the member for Gippsland South would not have been party to such an agreement if he was in the upper house, because he would not do that. But clearly that is not the case where Mr Finn is concerned, nor Mr Ondarchie. They saw fit to behave in an appalling way.

I remember years ago I had a conversation with Peter Redlich, who founded Holding Redlich. Peter and I did not get on particularly well, it would be fair to say, but one thing he said to me has always struck me as being very true: ‘The only thing you have in this life is your name, and if you trade against that, you’ve got nothing’. I do not know how long Mr Ondarchie or Mr Finn will have as parliamentarians, but forever they will be condemned for their abject failure and their just utter betrayal of the system of the Parliament. It is absolutely outrageous.

We have heard a lot from those opposite complaining about us bringing forward this legislation. What they have not fessed up to and what they have not acknowledged is that when they sat around the cabinet table, when they were in government in the 57th Parliament, they stripped $40 million out of the CFA budget. Again, power reveals, and we are judged by the decisions that we make around that cabinet table and by the budget that we bring into this place. When they sat on this side of the house, when they had the opportunity to support their CFA, to defend their CFA, to defend their volunteers, to get behind and back their CFA, to support the hardworking volunteers, to protect regional communities, their response was to strip out $40 million—$40 million they ripped out! So you cannot trust them. You cannot believe in them. They have got no values, because when it comes down to it they will do whatever suits them, and it clearly suited them at that time to rip the money out of the CFA and to deprive the volunteers of the equipment and resources that they needed and to deprive them of training. That is what they did.

There was evidence in the course of the 57th Parliament in relation to presumptive rights—the need to make sure that people who serve as firefighters have got the ability to access compensation because of the hazardous and dangerous work that they do. Those opposite did not introduce presumptive rights; they had no interest in introducing presumptive rights. They had that opportunity. They had an opportunity to support hardworking volunteers—to give hardworking volunteers the opportunity to access presumptive rights—and they failed to do so. They had no interest in doing so. So when they come in here now bleating about this as an issue you just cannot take them seriously, because when they had the chance to do something they did nothing.

Actually, you know what? What it comes down to—and I turn to the member for Gembrook’s reasoned amendment—is that doing nothing is all they are good for because whenever there is an opportunity to do any hard work they abdicate any responsibilities. A reasoned amendment: for those new members of this place, what that means is this is about withdrawing the bill—not debating the bill, not passing the bill, not having the legislation on the statute books and not providing our regional communities with the support they need before a fire season. This is about doing nothing. Those opposite excel at doing nothing. They get a high distinction when it comes to doing nothing because for four years they did nothing—and they were absolutely condemned for it.

How bad would you have to be to be a government that gets thrown out after one term? It has not happened since 1955, and those opposite were able to achieve that KPI. It is just extraordinary, and now they are trying to prevent us, they are trying to stop us, from getting on with the job of delivering a modern, 21st-century fire service to protect Victorians both in Melbourne and in regional and rural areas. The reality is that these boundaries were established in the 1950s. Areas where I grew up were turned into housing estates in the 1970s but were previously orchards. Where I grew up, 25 kilometres east of Melbourne, they were all orchards until the 1960s and 1970s. The boundary for the CFA was drawn, I believe, in about the 1950s.

We are growing at 147 000 people per year. We are adding a city the size of Canberra to our borders every three years. Those opposite are suggesting that we should be stuck in the 1950s. That is where they want to take us. They want to take us back to the 1950s. It is not Back to the Future. This is about providing modern protections for our communities. It is about providing protections and making sure that we have got a world-class service that is properly resourced and that reflects the 21st century and not the 1950s.

We are absolutely committed to bringing forward this legislation. We made it absolutely clear that this was what we were going to do when we were confronted with the absolute treachery and appalling behaviour of those opposite when they pulled their dodgy stunt in the other place on Good Friday. We have been absolutely clear on this. Those opposite know full well what we have intended to do, and we are going to do this because we have got a mandate to govern.

We do not idle. We do not shy away from hard work. We are here to work, and we are here to get things done. Those opposite might have been happy to take ministerial salaries and do no work for four years—to have a four-year holiday from hard work, like the member for Manila. That is not what we are here to do. We are here to get on with the job of delivering good administration to this state. This is vitally important legislation, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (18:51): We have an extraordinary situation in my part of the world where we now have two Labor members neither of whom are originally from the area. One of them, in the members register of interests, currently lists her only residence as Carlton North. That member is Jane Garrett, and she is now one of the Labor members for Eastern Victoria Region. The fact that the former member for Brunswick has ended up as a member for Eastern Victoria Region is a long and sorry saga, and it is only one of the consequences—

Ms Halfpenny: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, on relevance, we are talking about the fire services bill. I do not know what that has to do with where people live or do not live. It is all very strange.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr McGuire): The member for Gippsland South, to continue on the bill.

Mr D O’BRIEN: As I was about to say, the fact that Jane Garrett is now a member for Eastern Victoria Region despite previously being the member for Brunswick is one of the very, very many sorry outcomes of this process that we have seen as the Andrews Labor government has attempted to destroy the CFA. It started in 2014 when the United Firefighters Union (UFU) campaigned so strongly for the Andrews Labor government, and as a result we have ended up with Jane Garrett as a member for Eastern Victoria Region. Whilst I do not for a minute support someone well out of our region representing us, I have no particular issue with Jane Garrett. Indeed I think her performance as the Minister for Emergency Services and the strong position that she took is to be commended. It stands in stark contrast to all those over the other side, particularly the ones who have just come in in 2018, who have got the government notes and are reading them furiously and just doing what they are told to do.

It is a disgrace that we are here debating this bill today. There is no reason for us to be debating this bill a day after it was introduced. I heard those opposite say time and again that we have had two years to look at this. I ask all those opposite to have a look at the bills we have debated so far this year. I reckon there have got to be 10 or a dozen that were introduced and debated in this place last year or the year before that did not make it through the last Parliament. Did we do those in one day? No. We followed the usual processes of the house, and they were adjourned for two weeks to give us the opportunity. Those opposite are saying, ‘Oh, you knew this bill; you’ve had plenty of time to consult’. So we are supposed to take your word yesterday on this piece of legislation—172 pages—that it is exactly the same. Righto! It would be an absolute dereliction of our duty to our constituents and to the people of Victoria if we took your word for it.

So it is disgraceful that we are here debating this a day after it was introduced, and those opposite need to explain—no-one has explained—why there is an urgency to introduce this. No-one has explained. If there was such urgency to introduce this, why didn’t we do it before 18 May? Could you explain? Why didn’t we do it before 18 May? We have had about four or five months of sittings so far this year. Well, we all know the reason for that. We know that this is a sham. We know that in 2016 the Premier messed up Bill Shorten’s first attempt at the Lodge, and so we know that this is now another attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes. That is why it was not introduced before the federal election, and we all could have predicted that this would be what would happen straight after 18 May. Unfortunately for those opposite they thought they would be dealing with a different federal government, but there you go: it did not work out for them the way they wanted.

I hear those opposite saying that we have got to move out of the 1950s, and we had the member for Yan Yean saying there have been countless reviews of the CFA structure. That is true, and not one of them, including the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, recommended a change to this. Indeed it went the opposite way. The royal commission said that the CFA structure as it was was critical to providing the surge capacity that the CFA, and particularly those brigades in the outer suburbs, provide in times of major bushfires. So again, not one of those opposite has explained why this is needed.

Now, the member for Essendon just then—and I do respect the member for Essendon—talked about how we have got to modernise, how we cannot have a system from the 1950s and that where there used to be orchards there are now suburbs. Again, he did not provide any compelling evidence that the current model is broken. We know that the only reason we are doing this is because of Peter Marshall and the United Firefighters Union. I know many of those opposite—perhaps not those in the chamber right now but those who were actually around in the previous Parliament—are internally shaking their heads too. They are not quite sure why the Premier has been so determined to do whatever Peter Marshall wants.

I will just go on. Jane Garrett was not the only casualty of the wreckage that this has been. We can go through the other casualties: Danny Michell, the chief of staff to the minister, resigned; Jane Garrett, as I mentioned; and the member for Monbulk, the then minister, sacked the entire CFA board, being Claire Higgins, John Peberdy, Ross Coyle, Katherine Forrest, Michael Freshwater, Peter Harmsworth, James Holyman, John Schurink and Michael Tudball. Then of course we had Lucinda Nolan, the Premier’s own hand-picked CFA CEO, she went as well; Joe Buffone, the CFA chief fire officer; the Metropolitan Fire Brigade chief officer, Peter Rau; Bruce Byatt, the CFA deputy chief officer; Paul Stacchino, the MFB acting chief officer; and Jim Higgins, the MFB CEO, who quit. And then we had 10 senior MFB firefighters in October 2017 outlining how they were forced into early retirement by the UFU, launching legal proceedings on what they said was a 15-year campaign of bullying, harassment and intimidation against them by the UFU and Peter Marshall.

There is a trail of wreckage that has been left across the state by the government’s mishandling of our fire services, and we have seen that affect our volunteers. In my electorate they are sick of it. They do not have any integrated stations, but they know that there will be a big impact because they are going to be governed, effectively, by the UFU through Fire Rescue Victoria. They are already concerned about CFA HQ. They certainly do not want their new career staff to be controlled out of Melbourne by the UFU. So I think this is ridiculous, and as a result of that concern that they have we have seen the number of volunteer firefighters plunge, according to the annual report, which of course was hidden away from Victorians before the election last year and only released in December. We saw in that the reason why; there are 3749 less operational volunteer firefighters than there were in 2014 when the Premier came to power—a reduction of 3749. It is an absolute joke that those opposite think that this is somehow a good thing.

The haste with which it is being rushed through this place is evidence of the government’s stance. Victorians know this is not being done in the interests of their safety; this is being done for the base political wants of the Premier, the Labor Party, Peter Marshall and the United Firefighters Union. I will go on to say, as a number of my colleagues have, quoting Jack Rush, QC, who was—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am required under sessional orders to interrupt business now. The member may continue his speech when the matter is next before the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.