My long last word and a big thank you
By Andrew Ford, VFBV Chief Executive Officer
This will be my last Fire Wise editorial as I will be stepping down as VFBV CEO at the end of this month. Wow, it starts to set in when I write it down that plainly. What a journey it has been! And because it’s my last I am taking the liberty for it to be a long one. Apologies to anyone too busy to read it.
The most important thing I want to say is THANK YOU. Thank you to everyone I have worked with throughout my 27 years with CFA and VFBV. You are incredible people doing an outstanding and sometimes undervalued job. CFA volunteers aren’t just something that this state is lucky to have, you are fundamentally and absolutely vital to Victoria’s fire and emergency management arrangements. Value what you do, be proud of what you do and keep up the good work.
I have said this to many people outside CFA but perhaps not enough to those of you who are CFA – CFA volunteers, along with volunteers from other organisations, are the epitome of selflessness and a glue in society that we cannot do without. CFA volunteering is a legacy that we inherited from wise people who came before us and being a part of sustaining that legacy has been an honor and a privilege. Many of the most outstanding people, leaders, exemplars of true decency and humble professionals, are people I have met through my work with CFA and VFBV.
Deciding to step down as VFBV CEO has been one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make for a long time. Having made the decision I must say I am extremely happy with it but it was hard all the same. I am leaving as VFBV CEO but I leave with many friendships that I know will be lifetime friendships, many fond memories and proud achievements plus a bond to CFA volunteering that will transcend whatever I do next in life. Like many others CFA has become family to me and I’m not going far. I hope I haven’t seen the last of the best of CFA and I hope CFA remains a strong and proud organisation for years to come.
Stepping down as VFBV CEO on 30 April will bring an end to a significant chapter in my working life and the 27 years with CFA, including 15 years as an employee of CFA in senior management roles at both corporate HQ and CFA regional management and the last 12 as CEO Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria. It is a hard decision and one that I sadly see many valuable, experienced and dedicated CFA people grappling with.
Count back 27 years and you will see that my time with CFA started in 1992. CFA of today is a vastly different, more modern and more capable organisation than it was then. Don’t believe the rubbish our current State Government spins when it says CFA is still operating as it did back then.
Back in 1992 I remember the future planning discussions talking about big challenges and opportunities. There was great energy and constant drive, proud drive, to improve and modernise. Back then and I expect well prior there was constant effort to evolve, adapt and innovate to ensure CFA could cope with urban service growth, changing demographics, increasing community expectations. And apart from where government funding hasn’t allowed for this CFA has risen to the challenge.
I remember during my role as CFA’s Manager Corporate Planning people mocking when we forecast wild future ideas such as the possibility that people would one day have ‘PEDs’ (Personal Electronic Devices) with computing power similar to desk top computers and how these would transform the way people worked and lived. The iPhone we all rely on today are way beyond what we dreamed of. And wanting a pager that would let volunteers tell their brigade whether they were responding or not, crazy space cadet stuff supposedly. Sadly, even today when such technology readily exists, brigades have had to buy such a system without the endorsement of the government policy makers!!
Back then the CFA budget was about $80M per year, there were about 300 paid firefighters supporting volunteers in 26 integrated brigades, about 70,000 volunteers and a few hundred paid staff in management, administration, specialist and technical roles. CFA scratched to fund fire truck replacement and upgrades or issue Personal Protective Clothing, training was nothing like it is today and inter agency cooperation was patchy. There were perpetual discussions about challenges such as the need for radically better funding of CFA to resource modern training, truck replacement, personal issue PPC, communications systems, upgraded facilities and equipment to cope with urban population growth and the need for flexible local brigade support options to sustain and strengthen CFA brigade capacity in Melbourne’s urban growth corridors.
Right back in 1992 and in the decades that followed, the strategic discussions about the future direction and modernising the fire services included the need for fire service resourcing priorities to move beyond a preoccupation with response and suppression to a greater focus on community awareness and communities sharing responsibility for their own safety. There was active discussion, albeit sometimes unpopular, about the logic and need to reform the paid-only MFB fire service model to introduce volunteers and an integrated service model like the CFA fully integrated model (paid firefighters and volunteers working together as one team) throughout the MFB area. For my whole time with CFA there has been deep recognition of the need for fire services to work together and the notion of more joined up fire and emergency services. Sadly now the current Victorian State government wants to split it further apart and institutionalise a more fragmented fire service.
Throughout my time in CFA there has been a concern across all sides of politics, successive Governments and officials in agency command roles (both CFA and MFB) about the impact and future risk of escalating industrial restrictions on how the fire services are able to manage and deploy their scarce and expensive paid resources; a view that industrial interference was crippling fire service efficiency and driving an unaffordable increase in the cost of fire services and dragging resource allocation away from areas that would actually have a bigger impact on community safety outcomes. Even as recently as 2015 I recall the current Victorian Premier supporting a view that the EBA demands (now supported by this Government) were unaffordable, unrealistic and unworkable.
As far back as I can recall review after review, including the Productivity Commission and Victoria’s own Auditor General’s Office have been saying that fire services should be focussing on community safety outcomes not just fire truck response times. And all of the progressive talk, not just in Victoria but the world over, has been that any future planning and modernisation of the fire services must be driven by a paradigm shift in focus away from a simple fire suppression focus to a more wholistic approach that also includes a better focus on prevention, preparedness and recovery underpinned by building local community awareness, capability and resilience and ideally underpinned by local community embedded emergency management capability. Alas, a community embedded, volunteer- based service delivery model with the flexibility to be supplemented by paid staff support in a fully integrated manner when and where risk or service demand requires it. Pretty much like the world class CFA model. Who woulda thought!!
Throughout my career, all of the experts and all of the evidence-based reviews, including the pivotal 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, called for the sector to be more joined up, to move toward working as one, to work more seamlessly across jurisdiction borders. And look where we are now, looking down the barrel of the current Victorian Government’s plan to further fragment the fire service and institutionalise division, inflexibility and a narrow focussed service paradigm.
Since I joined in 1992 and every year since, there has been strong awareness amongst agency experts of the opportunity to invest more in and pay much greater respect to the experience, professionalism and capacity of volunteers. Volunteers after all are not just a handy, ‘cheap’, resource they are a core ingredient of communities sharing responsibility for their own safety and unmistakably the only economically viable emergency management capability model for a place such as Victoria being one of the most fire prone areas in the world.
Throughout my years there has also much talk about the need for local community needs, operational priorities, capability planning for major catastrophes, fire prevention, active community involvement and community safety outcomes to be the driver of fire service policy, funding and resource allocation. And above all there has been strong recognition of the importance of the CFA Chief Officer and CFA Board’s statutory role and powers to ensure these things drove fire service direction not politics, bureaucrats or bean counters.
The message in all of this? CFA is a vastly more modern and better equipped organisation now than it was in 1992. CFA and the CFA volunteer-based model delivers incredible and vital capability. The model and CFA volunteers have demonstrated a continual capacity to innovate, adapt and modernise.
Even though there are significant holes in CFA’s budget, often creating a feeling of a ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and a concern that still too much of CFA’s budget is chewed up on low priority ‘waste’, CFA today is a highly professional and predominantly well-equipped service. Volunteers undertake nationally accredited training, get to utilise modern firefighting equipment capable of responding to any risk from complex industrial to urban to remote rural, and have sophisticated operational systems.
Today’s existing CFA arrangements deliver a world regarded and flexible resource model that, if applied and funded properly, allows CFA brigades to be allocated with whatever additional support (equipment, paid firefighters, systems, training) might be required to cope with urban expansion. Today CFA’s budget is more than a 300% increase in real $ terms than it was in 1992, there are more than 2600 paid staff working with and in support of volunteers and whilst volunteer numbers have declined to their lowest levels since 1992, there are still 55,000 CFA volunteers.
To say today’s CFA is not a modern firefighting agency is irresponsible community scare mongering bull dust.
But sadly, despite the significant improvements there are some elements of 1992 that still exist today; some of the hairy problems and constraints still holding the fire service back from being as good as it could be; funding shortfalls that mean volunteer brigades still don’t have the infrastructure and equipment required for them to perform at their best and; way more political and industrial interference today than anyone could have dreamed of back in 1992.
On my darker days my answer to some people when they ask why am I leaving is a glib, I’m dizzy. Dizzy from going around the same circle on some of these issues and tired of arguing with people who will ultimately not face any accountability for their flawed interference in the statutory role of CFA and CFA decision making or their own failure to fund CFA properly.
On my brighter days I would rather say I am leaving because I have stayed a long time and it is simply time to have a break and try a few other things.
It’s probably a combination of both.
And rather than talk about leaving CFA I would prefer to focus on why I have loved my CFA experience so much, how much I respect and appreciate CFA volunteers and the people who support them to do their great work and how proud I am to be able to say I am part of CFA. I would rather talk about why I have stayed so long and why I will continue on in a support role for VFBV.
I have stayed because of the incredible dedication and contribution of CFA volunteers; because of the amazing work CFA does and the importance of the CFA model remaining as strong as it can possibly be for the future; and because of my deep commitment to encouraging and strengthening CFA volunteerism for the benefit of future Victorians. I am staying on in an advisory and project capacity part time because I am deeply concerned about the difficult times ahead for CFA given that the Government has said that it still intends to proceed with the dismantling of CFA.
So I guess it is good bye, but at the same time, I’ll see you around. Thanks again.
Workwear
VFBV had a very productive meeting between CFA representatives and the VFBV Uniform Working Party on 9 March 2019. More than 3,300 volunteers participated in the Volunteer Workwear Survey conducted by CFA late last year, and the results were shared and discussed.
Volunteer feedback to the survey was comprehensive and detailed, if at times blunt, and provided CFA with a clear picture of volunteer expectations and aspirations for workwear. VFBV delegates have reported the discussion was refreshingly open and constructive, and they had a renewed optimism that CFA has heard volunteer feedback and is responding constructively.
The turnaround is welcomed after significant historical controversy and disappointment about consultation and listening to volunteer feedback, and is a positive indicator that significant progress is being made. VFBV gained a number of commitments from CFA on how it will incorporate the volunteer feedback into a revised design.
VFBV is pleased CFA committed to publicly releasing the results of the survey shortly, and will provide more information, including next steps after the survey results have been released.
SOP 6.06 consultation
CFA is currently consulting on proposed changes to SOP 6.06: Practical and Hot Fire Training. CFA is proposing significant changes to this SOP, and members are asked to review these and provide feedback to VFBV as soon as possible. Information on how to access the proposed SOP can be found on the VFBV website.
Brigades and Groups are urged to assess the changes and discuss the potential for any of the proposed changes to impede or create barriers to operational training conducted by Brigades and Groups. Members are encouraged to also discuss feedback at upcoming District Council meetings to ensure VFBV is informed of any concerns or difficulties.
beyondBlue fundraiser
The State Urban Championship concluded with the hotly contested “W.A./Victoria Challenge event”, a Hose & Reel 8s event between Western Australia and Victoria with both states making up a team from competitors at the Championship.
The Western Australia team easily won the Challenge event this year, with a time of 27.49 seconds.
This year’s fundraiser auction of a number of the Victorian Challenge team’s competition shirts raised $3,100, and included monies raised from an auction of one of the ‘Chief Officer’s Chargers’ competition shirts, an event run on the first day of the Championship between a team of the CO and his deputies, against the top 2019 Junior teams.
The $3,100 will be donated to beyondblue, which works to raise awareness of depression, anxiety and suicide prevention, as well as tackling the stigma surrounding these issues, and encourages people to seek support when they need it. VFBV is proud to support such a worthy cause and thanks the sponsors - the Firefighters Credit Co-operative, Haughton Plumbing Eaglehawk, and R & G Jilbert Plumbing – for providing the Challenge shirts for auction.
Full results of the 2019 State Championship can be found on the VFBV website.
Dandenong wins State Urban Grand Aggregate
Dandenong won its 5th Grand Aggregate title at last month’s 2019 State Urban Championship at Bendigo. The Championship was closely contested right up until the very last event, the Champion Fours. With Dandenong taking out third placing in this event, it finished the Championship in the lead with 85 points in the Grand Aggregate. Close behind was Maryvale with 80 points, and Kangaroo Flat on 76 points.
A long-time 1978 record for the Champion Fours event set by the Carrum Brigade (now Patterson River) of 16.05 seconds was broken by the Kangaroo Flat Brigade with a time of 15.90 seconds, which created an exciting finish to the Championship.
VFBV congratulates the Bendigo and Districts Fire Brigades Championship Committee on hosting yet another very successful Championship. VFBV sincerely thanks members of the Committee and neighbouring brigades for their significant work and efforts in hosting three successive State Urban Championships. A great effort by all concerned.
VFBV also expresses sincere appreciation to the City of Greater Bendigo for its significant financial support to our State Championships over the past three years.
The Championship was well attended, with more than 2,000 people attending and 52 entered teams from across the state totalling well over 400 competitors, and also included teams from Harvey from Western Australia and Wyong from New South Wales.
The number of female competitors continues to increase, with many mixed teams now competing in the more traditional male events such as the Ladder Race, Hydrant Race and the reel events.
You could win!!
Brigades or Groups that pay VFBV affiliations before 30 June 2019 will automatically go into the draw for a chance to win one of four great prizes!
The 2019/20 Affiliation notices for your Brigade/ Group’s VFBV affiliation and VFBV Welfare Fund Subscriptions are with your Secretary now with a due date of 30 June 2019.
As a gesture of appreciation to Brigades and Groups that pay their VFBV affiliation prior to 30 June, VFBV will automatically place your Brigade or Group into a draw for a chance to win one of the four great prizes, kindly donated by GAAM Emergency Products and Powdersafe Pty. Ltd.
For further details, checkout the “You Could Win” flyer included with your 2019/20 VFBV Affiliation Notice sent out to your Secretary last month.
TAE upgrade reminder
Members are reminded that volunteer trainer and assessors who wish to be involved in the assessment of national training qualifications need to ensure their Training & Assessing Qualifications are up-to-date. CFA has established a panel of recognised providers that will work with members to upgrade older qualifications to the new requirements.
Districts and Regions have been responsible for identifying and contacting relevant members to schedule and provide upgrade programs locally. Members holding the older TAE10 qualifications being prioritised.
In welcome news, the federal government has announced an extension to the original 1st April deadline, to 1st July 2019 to help individuals complete their gap training.
However, members are urged to not delay their upgrade as the Education Department has advised there will be no further extensions.
A number of volunteers have made VFBV aware of upgrade courses that were cancelled by CFA at the last minute earlier this year. VFBV delegates on the Joint Training Committee have expressed disappointment and concern about the factors leading to these cancellations. CFA has taken this feedback onboard, apologised and given assurances that this will not occur again.
Members are encouraged to ensure their training and assessing qualifications are up-to-date and should speak with their District Training staff urgently should they be required to complete any upgrade or gap training to bring their qualifications up to the new standards.
Position Vacant - Executive Officer
VFBV is seeking a talented and motivated person for the position of Executive Officer to work fulltime based at our Burwood East office.
Reporting to the CEO, this senior position involves working in a team environment to address issues impacting on all volunteers and representing VFBV on committees and working parties. You will work actively with VFBV State Council and District Councils with an aim to ensure volunteers’ views are understood and that issues of concern can either be resolved locally or escalated through appropriate channels.
The role has responsibility for the provision of expert technical, practical and strategic advice on matters affecting CFA volunteers. The role provides important leadership support to VFBV’s network of consultative forums, committees and working parties, as well as providing senior level support to the CEO in developing and managing relationships and partnerships with key stakeholders.
We need a person who can effectively represent volunteers within CFA, to Government, to other organisations and the general public. The role involves considerable liaison with CFA at Executive and senior management levels; working closely with brigades and District Councils; and influencing external decision makers. Strong interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills is essential.
Applicants need to have an understanding and appreciation of issues relevant to CFA brigades and volunteerism in general. You need to be able to demonstrate an ability to establish productive relationships within our own membership base and also with people who influence decisions about matters affecting volunteers. It is important that you are a self starter and can demonstrate success while managing multiple concurrent issues and challenging work demands. You need to be a good communicator and someone who understands how to lead and influence others to achieve outcomes.
This is a permanent position, based at our Burwood office. Recognising that the position supports brigades across Victoria, the position involves considerable travel including weekend and evening work required to support our volunteer membership base.
All applications must include current resume and cover letter addressing key result areas and selection criteria outlined in the Position Description found on our website.
Please contact Cathie Smith for any queries by phone on 03 9886 1141 or via email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Inviting Applicants for CFA Board
The CFA legislation recognises that it is important that the CFA Board has strong volunteer expertise, knowledge and an understanding of CFA volunteers. To support this, CFA legislation provides for four of the CFA Board's Members to be appointed from a panel of names submitted by Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, two being representatives from brigades predominantly service urban communities and two being representatives from brigades predominantly serving rural communities.
The terms of CFA Board Members Hazel Clothier, Lynda Hamilton, Peter Shaw and Tim Young expire 19th July 2019, triggering the need for VFBV to seek applications for a panel of names to be nominated for the next term commencing 20th July 2019.
VFBV is seeking applications for volunteers interested in filling one of the four VFBV nominated positions on the CFA Board.
CFA volunteers who believe they have the skills, experience and capacity to make a contribution to the Board of the CFA, are invited to apply for nomination to the CFA Board. In addition to volunteer experience and knowledge, selection will have regard to any of the following: knowledge of, or experience in, commercial, technical, operational, legal or financial matters; or expertise in fire or emergency management, land management or any other field relevant to the performance of the functions of the CFA.
From applications received and following interviews, VFBV will submit a panel of names to the Minister for Police & Emergency Services.
The CFA Board meets on a monthly basis and also operates a committee system which could require commitment of one half day per month. Attendance at official functions is also expected.
CFA Board Members current annual remuneration is $58,598 (including Superannuation).
The CFA Board Charter is available from the VFBV office. For other relevant information, interested volunteers should contact VFBV - contact details below.
Applications including a current resume must be emailed or faxed to VFBV by COB on Friday 24th May 2019 to: email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or fax: 03 9886 1618.
Inviting to Apply: Board Members of Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria (VFBV)
INVITATION OPEN TO ALL VOLUNTEERS TO APPLY
Closing date for written applications is 31st July 2019
VFBV advances the interests of all Victorian fire brigade volunteers and advocates on their behalf to CFA and other key stakeholders. The VFBV Board drives policy development based on volunteer input and is involved in management of issues of central importance to all CFA volunteers.
Vacancies for Four Board Members will arise when the terms of Samantha Rothman, Kate Boschetti, Jan Cleary and Libby Hay expire on 1st October 2019; all members are eligible for reappointment.
The term of appointment will be to 1st October 2021 (two years) and applications are invited from interested volunteers to be considered for these vacancies.
The role of a VFBV Board Member involves contributing to VFBV direction, policy determination and monitoring the performance and governance of the Association. Also actively contributing to policy discussion at Board Meetings, networking with others about policies and issues management, and not only making decisions but being prepared to actively advocate for the benefit of all CFA volunteers and ultimately the Victorian community.
A Board Member Role Statement including the key selection criteria is available from the VFBV office or from the VFBV website.
This is an honorary position; no honorarium is paid.
If you are motivated by the prospect of making a difference for CFA volunteers, then send your written application addressing the key selection criteria in the role statement, plus an outline of your CFA activity including the names of two referees.
Applications must be lodged with VFBV by Wednesday 31st July 2019 to:
VFBV, 9/24 Lakeside Drive, Burwood East 3151
Tel: 9886 1141; Fax: 9886 1618
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
