Updated 18 December - click here for SA volunteers' angry protest over cancer backdown
Lilydale: Volunteers turn out to support cancer campaign
One hundred CFA volunteers have lined the main street of Lilydale with fire trucks, at a family day in support of the campaign for fairer and simpler cancer compensation for Victoria’s firefighters.
Local volunteer representatives, including Lilydale Captain Warren Davis and VFBV District 13 President Bill Watson AFSM, met with Liberal MP Christine Fyffe to discuss the issue, and she offered her advice and assistance in organising meetings with other key MPs. Labor MP Danielle Green also attended to show support, and both MPs addressed the crowd.
Volunteers are pursuing the issue because current Victorian law leaves firefighters with an almost impossible task; they are entitled to cancer compensation, but to get it they must show evidence of fires or incidents they attended that might be 10 or 15 years ago, and prove on the balance of probabilities which incidents or which toxic exposures caused the cancer.
Volunteers are calling for presumptive legislation that would reverse the onus of proof; if a firefighter suffers one of the known firefighter cancers, it would be presumed to be work related. That would allow the firefighter to concentrate on treatment and recovery, instead of a lengthy and expensive court case.
So far, the Australian, Tasmanian, West Australian and South Australian Governments have changed their laws, but Victoria is lagging behind.
As the CFA volunteers’ association, Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria (VFBV) is calling on all volunteers to write to their local MPs, or meet with them, to explain the importance of the issue and ask them to introduce and support presumptive legislation for volunteer and career firefighters in Victoria.
