South Australian CFS volunteers have begun an angry protest aimed at State politicians, after the Liberal Opposition supported the Labor Government’s discriminatory cancer legislation.

The legislation provides presumptive compensation for SA career firefighters but applies an eligibility requirement to volunteers that will exclude most of them from coverage.  To qualify for coverage, Country Fire Service volunteers must attend at least 35 incidents a year for five consecutive years.

The Bill was passed in the last minutes of the current SA Parliament’s final sitting for 2013, ahead of the March 2014 state election.

SA volunteers are still attending emergency calls but now leave a lot of the clean-up work to government agencies.   They are refusing to attend any media activity involving State politicians, and have erected banners in key locations.

Presumptive legislation removes an unfair barrier to compensation for firefighters suffering work related cancer.  It recognises that firefighters are known to be more prone to certain types of cancer and presumes those cancers to be work related.

For information on the campaign for presumptive legislation in Victoria, click here