VFBV

Since the submission date for the Inquiry closed, and following detailed discussion at VFBV State Council in September, VFBV has written to all Victorian Members of Parliament with a summary of our submission to the State Government’s Fire Services Review – see below for a copy of the letter.

The letter includes an introduction to the broader issues and a list of points that volunteers are particularly concerned about.

VFBV has also offered to have volunteer representatives meet with any MPs who would like to discuss the issues or learn more about volunteers’ concerns at the state level or in their local area. 

MPs are invited to call the VFBV office on (03) 9886 1141 if they would like to make contact with their local CFA volunteer delegates.

VFBV'S Letter to all State MPs, dated 28 September 2015

Dear Member

VFBV submission to the State Government’s Fire Services Review

As the association representing CFA volunteers, VFBV has recently made an extensive submission to the Fire Services Review. The VFBV submission and relevant material is available via the VFBV website (visit www.vfbv.com.au) and I encourage you to visit our website to read or download this material, as it explains a number of key matters about which volunteers feel very strongly.

Perceptions about the Review’s focus, process and background context have given rise to significant anxiety amongst Victoria’s volunteers, particularly over a number of principles fundamental to CFA’s future success as a volunteer based organisation.

The key and critical principles that volunteers find essential are the following:

♦ The obligations, duties and aspirations both express and implied in the CFA Volunteer Charter as recognised in the current CFA Act and the maintenance of Section 6 of the Act are fundamental to CFA volunteerism and its success in delivering CFA services to the people of Victoria. Critically, flowing from these and in recognition of the core role volunteers play in Victoria’s emergency management, any decision making that may impact on volunteers at any level of government or its agencies must incorporate volunteers in that process and the effects on volunteer capacity must be a clear, transparent and fair feature of such decision making.

♦ Recognition of the importance that the CFA Board has strong volunteer expertise, knowledge and understanding of CFA volunteerism must continue and the engagement of volunteers through current arrangements for volunteer nomination to and level of representation on the CFA Board as currently provided. These arrangements are central to the engagement and utilisation of volunteer knowledge and experience.

♦ The CFA must have genuine ability and empowerment to govern and manage resource decisions, including internal resource allocation and prioritisation of support to volunteers consistent with its current statutory obligations. This includes the powers of the Chief Officer to determine all operational and related matters free of external interference save from the requirements of the CFA Act as currently set out and the statutory role of the Emergency Management Commissioner.

♦ Active removal of external interference and arrangements (including those affecting CFA, EMV and Government) that impede, or block volunteers from being genuinely involved in decision making on all matters which may impact on them including proposed legislation and the adequacy of resources to enable volunteers to deliver the agreed services. 

♦ The CFA Budget and priorities must be established at a level and grow as required with such spending and resource priorities so as to ensure that volunteers maintain and continue to grow their capacity to provide CFA services to the people of urban and rural Victoria and provide Victoria with a high level surge capacity to deal with emergencies across the state. The determination and order of budget priorities consistent with this must be determined without inappropriate external interference or influence, and consistent with its statutory, governance and administrative accountabilities, obligations and requirements.

♦ CFA Budget priorities must ensure that there is sufficient resourcing to provide volunteers with best possible access to necessary training, up to date facilities and equipment including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), communications and vehicles, legal protection, and appropriate financial compensation for injury, illness and personal loss sustained during service to the people of Victoria.

♦ There must be transparency with regard to the determination, collection and expenditure of the Fire Services Levy (FSL).

♦ The total additional cost of any additional initiatives determined by government and not conforming to the order of CFA determined priorities must be resourced separately by government for the duration of the initiative and must not interfere in any way with CFA meeting its resource priorities for encouraging, maintaining and strengthening the capacity of volunteers to deliver CFA services to Victoria.

♦ CFA high level resourcing priorities must include volunteer support and capacity strengthening, including appropriate expansion of the BASO program, training and skills maintenance including first aid training, leadership development, and provision of EMR services to the public by volunteers, fixing communications problems and cyclic vehicle/appliance replacement.

♦ A culture of respect for volunteers, including ensuring there is no discrimination nor any barriers against volunteers simply because they are not paid. This includes barriers to the roles volunteers perform; access to training for volunteers demonstrating a willingness and capacity for higher level training; or utilisation and acceptance of volunteers’ authority and role in command and control within CFA and the broader emergency services.  There should also be a leadership culture of active intolerance to any discrimination against volunteers based on their volunteer status.

♦ Acceptance that appropriately trained and experienced volunteers can carry out duties of any designation within CFA and Victoria’s emergency management sector and proactive effort to engage their active utilisation in such roles. 

♦ Active encouragement and facilitation of individual volunteers demonstrating a willingness and capacity for high level training and utilisation in command and control and other CFA roles for training, building experience and sustaining qualifications, including for IMTs and the highest levels in incident control.

♦ Government and CFA’s active public and institutional promotion and demonstrated respect for CFA (and other emergency service) volunteers and the essential role they play in Victoria’s safety including advocacy against public attacks made on volunteers.

In summary, volunteers are particularly concerned about:

• Erosion of CFA’s ability to govern, manage resource decisions and allocate appropriate priority to resourcing/supporting the capacity of volunteers to deliver CFA services
• Erosion of the CFA Chief Officer’s statutory powers and operational decision making ability 
• The need to improve consultation with volunteers and/or the representation of volunteer knowledge and expertise at key decision forums in any future arrangements
• Erosion of the obligations, intent and authority of the CFA Volunteer Charter and/or the practical application of the CFA Volunteer Charter
• Any decision making processes at CFA, EMV or Government that impact on volunteers but block volunteers out of the process
• Any cuts to CFA budget relating to volunteer support and volunteer capacity building forced because of the need to pay for externally imposed or new commitments 
• Any failure to fully additionally fund externally imposed or new commitments  for the life of the commitment
• Ensuring adequate investment in resources for training of volunteers and for volunteer equipment, facilities, personal protection, service related injury/illness compensation etc.
• Any diversion of funding raised through the Fire Service Levy and the Government’s related share to other cost areas
• Continuation of industrial agreements that establish power of veto that overrides legitimate CFA decision making or block CFA progressing volunteer support initiatives, resource allocation and CFA organisational structure
• External direction to CFA Board or management that is not transparent, justifiable and consistent with legislation
• Resourcing priorities and funding allocation decisions that ignore more cost effective and reliably beneficial opportunities to encourage, maintain and strengthen the capacity of volunteers to deliver CFA services (specifically referencing section 6i of the CFA Act)
• Any discrimination in the roles volunteers can perform, training opportunities for volunteers or recognition of volunteers’ skills/expertise simply because they are not paid
• Failure to positively advocate the essential nature, benefits and professional capacity of the CFA volunteer based system.

If decisions are made that are not consistent with these principles and concerns, we fear the consequence will be a legacy of diminished emergency management volunteer capacity for Victoria. Our desire and commitment is to work with you towards a positive atmosphere so that volunteers can focus their energy on continuing to provide dedicated services to the community and prepare for the forthcoming summer.

Volunteers want certainty about the real respect and commitment of all key decision makers across Government and institutions to the service they currently provide day and night, every day of the year.

Volunteers want it known that they are committed to the safety of the communities they serve and will strongly resist changes that they feel are not in the best interests of their community.

I am hopeful that you find the VFBV submission to the Fire Services Review and the points outlined above useful to our continuing endeavour to keep all Victorian MPs well informed about matters of fundamental importance to volunteers.

As always I would be more than happy to discuss these matters with you at your convenience.

Yours Sincerely,

Andrew Ford

Chief Executive Officer

<Click here to return to the Fire Services Review Submission page>

A message from the Board of Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria.

On Tuesday 18^th November, the Labor Party announced a policy that we believe will have grave and disastrous consequences for CFA.

As CFA volunteer firefighters with an average of over 40 years’ service each and as the elected board of the body established in Victorian law to be the voice of CFA volunteers, we feel the need to take this unprecedented action of activating all Victorians to help us stop a policy that has the potential to destroy CFA.

Our concern with the recently announced Labor policy is that it establishes external industrial interference with the CFA Chief Officer’s power to decide where and when and how he uses CFA firefighters.

We are also concerned that Labor’s policy will reduce CFA’s volunteer firefighting force by thousands of volunteers, pushing volunteers out of CFA stations and hundreds of CFA trucks off the road when we need them for major fires such as Black Saturday.

Labor has grossly underestimated the cost and impact of its policy.  Labor’s promise of $150M and an additional 350 paid firefighters actually only provides 70 additional paid firefighters on the ground at any one time under current paid firefighter rostering arrangements, and it will come at the expense of thousands of highly trained and professional volunteer firefighters.

We support and welcome additional paid support and resources for CFA, provided these resources are required and provided that the CFA determines the need, not a union.  Don’t be fooled, the plan announced by Labor is not about improving community safety in Victoria, the detail included in their announcement is about giving the control of CFA to a union.

Labor’s policy announcement includes specific provisions to surrender CFA operational decisions to an external industrial relations panel.

Instead of Labor’s policy, we need a plan that will recruit and train more CFA volunteer firefighters, provide trucks and equipment to combat fires and other incidents, investment in a modern firefighting fleet, give CFA the flexibility to deploy resources when and where they are needed and remove industrial control over how CFA uses its workforce.

Victoria is one of the most fire prone areas in the world and there are predictions of longer, hotter and more severe fire seasons ahead.  If Labor’s policy is allowed to push trained and experienced CFA volunteers out of fire stations across greater metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria will not have the fire fighting force it needs for day to day incidents and certainly will not have the force to deal with major incidents when they occur, such as Black Saturday.

When you vote on Saturday 29^th understand one thing, as some of Victoria’s most senior volunteer firefighters, we believe Labor’s policy for CFA is not good for CFA volunteers, is not good for Victoria and is not good for the future of CFA.
Signed;

All ten members of the VFBV Board. (The attached PDF copy includes all ten signatures)

A Message to the Labor Party

Dear (Labor) Member of Parliament,

This week the Board of Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria have taken the unprecedented step of publishing an open letter to the people of Victoria, to record their strong objection to Labor’s policy announcement of the 18^th November 2014 affecting the CFA.

The Board have not taken this decision lightly, and want you to understand the depth of despair and anger amongst volunteer ranks caused by Labor’s CFA policy - a policy that sweeps aside the role, discounts the work and ignores the rights of unpaid, hard-working and committed volunteers who make up over 97% of CFA’s 62,000 members and staff.

Make no mistake – this policy is a direct attack on CFA as a statutory volunteer based fire and emergency service where volunteers are supported by sufficient paid staff as expertly determined by the Chief Officer and who form a fully integrated workforce to deliver CFA services.

In 2011 Labor, Coalition and Green MPs in the Victorian Parliament unanimously voted to amend the CFA Act to explicitly recognise this long known fact.

Critical aspects of the amendment bill included:

• Statutory recognition of the Authority as a volunteer based organisation in which volunteers are supported by employees in a fully integrated manner ;
  
  
• Statutory recognition and acceptance of the Volunteer Charter which requires amongst other things that the Government and the Authority commits to meaningful consultation with the VFBV on behalf of CFA volunteers on any matter that might reasonably be expected to affect them;
  
  
• The statutory requirement that he Authority in performing its functions have regard to the commitment and principles set out in the Volunteer Charter; and,
  
  
• The statutory requirement that the Authority is responsible for developing policy and organisational arrangements that encourage, maintain and strengthen the capacity of volunteer officers and members to provide the Authority’s fire and emergency services.

The reason and purpose for these amendments were to set aside industrial arrangements introduced in the final years of the Brumby Government. Those arrangements failed to recognise that CFA and its services to the public are volunteer based and that the role of paid staff is to support such volunteers services as and when determined by the CFA’s Chief Officer and the Board of the Authority according to their statutory obligations.

Since these amendments, the CFA has fought and won cases in the Fair Work Commission and Federal Court that uphold its managerial and statutory responsibility to determine paid staff numbers and allocations within the organisation including its brigades on a needs basis as determined by the Chief Officer.

The CFA model recruits and integrates paid firefighters into volunteer brigades where they are needed to support the delivery of CFA services.

Labor’s policy axes this approach - it takes away the Chief’s role of determining these matters based on expertise and transfers it to an industrial board of reference. Further, it eliminates local volunteers and their state representatives from having any input into these decisions, despite their knowledge and experience.

This new Labor policy will have significant impacts upon CFA’s future and inevitably lead to a dramatic increase in costs to Victorians without any increase in public safety.

VFBV are deeply opposed to your support for the reinstatement of the previously short lived industrial board of reference. It changes the successful nature of the CFA as an organisation (which was consistently lauded by the Bushfire Royal Commission). It is an egregious attack on the independence and statutory powers of CFA’s Chief Officer. Decision making on key staffing issues is perverted from a critical operational matter to a matter of industrial negotiation.

To be clear, volunteers consider the office of the Chief Officer to be sacrosanct, and any attack on the independence and statutory authority of their Chief will be met with fierce and unrelenting resistance.

VFBV met with shadow Minister Wade Noonan last week following the announcement to express its concern and dismay at the policy. Nothing was provided during or since that meeting to allay our fears and we remain deeply concerned.

It was under the Bracks Labor Government that the Volunteer Charter was negotiated and signed by Steve Bracks as Premier, the CFA Chairman and the volunteer representatives. We now find that you have turned your back on the principles and values you told us were an enduring commitment. Volunteers have every right to feel aggrieved. Quite rightly, as the word spreads - volunteers will see your Party’s policy as a betrayal to the trust and respect afforded to you by CFA volunteers.
Sincerely,

Andrew Ford
Chief Executive Officer