Twenty years after the 2003 fires, systemic failures in emergency preparedness have not been addressed, the United Firefighters Union of Australia (UFU) ACT Branch claimed this week.
Standing at the site chosen for the Acton emergency services station in Clunies Ross Street – meant to be completed in 2021, and still only a grassy slope – Greg McConville, national secretary and secretary of the UFU ACT branch, listed a damning catalogue: obsolete and dangerous equipment; no recruitment of firefighters; health screening and mandatory skills maintenance for firefighters have not occurred; unacceptably high accrued leave; and veteran firefighters refused leave.
- Read also: Firefighters’ union calls for reforms to ACT emergency services (20 January)
“We think that these are systemic failures which will leave fire services short if a fire encroaches on the urban area, in the way that it did in 2003,” Mr McConville said. “In a spirit of honesty and commitment to the community, we think that these things need to be signalled very clearly to government, and we need urgent responses to them. The very same organisational settings that failed us in 2003 are in place today.”
The UFU alleged that two years into the ACT Fire and Rescue Enterprise Agreement 2020–24, the ACT Government has not delivered many of the commitments it agreed to fund, including the Acton station, 99 more firefighters, and new equipment and training
Firefighters, Mr McConville said, went for more than 1,000 days without an enterprise agreement, and rejected a 10 per cent pay rise in 2018, to secure resources for Canberra’s community. The public supported the firefighters, and in good faith to the community that backed them, the UFU want answers.
“We can’t abide the public being misled,” Mr McConville said.
Fire stations have not been built
The ACT Government announced in August 2020 that a new Acton fire and ambulance station, serving Canberra City and the inner north, would be operational in the 2022–23 financial year. The UFU were told that fire station would be completed by 31 December 2021 – but it remains a vacant block of land.
“Not a sod has been turned,” Mr McConville said.
The ACT Government, he said, also committed to complete another fire station, in Molonglo, by the end of 2023, but this is still in the scoping stage.
“Molonglo,” Mr McConville said, “bore the brunt of the fury of the 2003 fires, and it has since had a massive urban expansion. It does not have a fire station to service that expansion.” Currently, Molonglo residents rely on Aranda and Woden fire stations. “Those people living in that area do not have the fire protection that they deserve and that they pay for with their fire and emergency services levy.”
Matthew Mavity, chief officer of ACT Fire and Rescue, is not concerned that the delays would cause safety implications.
“The ACT is the safest place to live in Australia, and we’re amongst the best performing, if not the best performing, fire service in Australia across key metrics that are measured in the Report on Government Services every year,” he said.
The fire stations had not been built yet because the Enterprise Agreement had chosen ambitious dates, Mr Mavity stated.
“History shows us that from the recent builds at Aranda, South Tuggeranong, and West Belconnen, it takes about 18 months purely to do the construction phase,” he said.
“It was pretty ambitious to have a station designed, consulted, and built in less than 18 months.”
ACT Fire and Rescue took consultation with firefighters and their representatives seriously, Mr Mavity continued.
“There is a need for due diligence in spending lots of public money; they have to go to public tender processes and select a worthy company to design and construct these buildings so that the Canberra public get value for money and the firefighters get a good facility,” he said.
COVID, supply chain issues, and three years of rain had also created issues, Mr Mavity said.
Tenders for the Acton station close later this month; he expects the station to be completed in mid-2024 (if not delayed by rain or other construction issues).
The Molonglo station will be built later. Money has been allocated in the budget to continue the design phase; ACT Fire and Rescue will consult with the UFU.
Obsolete equipment
An ACT Government spokesperson said that technology and capability had significantly improved since 2003. ACT Fire and Rescue procured a new aerial pumping appliance and aerial platform in 2020, three replacement urban pumpers last year, and will obtain an electric fire truck early this year.
But the newest urban pumpers procured, Mr McConville said, still suffer from flammable plastic air intakes and unprotected brake lines – the exact same faults as the trucks in the 2003 bushfires, which caught fire and left firefighters stranded among burning buildings in Duffy.
“It’s highly insulting to those firefighters whose truck burned to the ground, the engine for which remains as a piece of molten metal on the wall of the Fire Brigade Historical Society Museum – it’s a slap in the face to the firefighters whose brake lines burnt through – that if it occurred again, they would be at risk of the same taking place,” Mr McConville said. “Those firefighters were left among burning buildings in a raging fire front with no protection.”
ACT Fire and Rescue has had to retrofit those trucks at taxpayer expense, instead of the supplier providing vehicles consistent with the agreed statement of requirements, Mr McConville said.
The government spokesperson stated that fire trucks are generally modified commercial truck chassis; modifications need to be made to ensure they can operate as fire trucks and for the safety of firefighters. ACT Fire and Rescue predominantly uses European manufactured trucks such as Volvos and Scanias which have protection applied to their brake lines and ember-resistant filters placed over their air intakes. These modifications are undertaken locally to customise the vehicles for the Australian bushfire environment, which is different to the European wildfire environment. All trucks are modified before they enter service.
The ACT Government stated that staff are undergoing necessary training to introduce the new trucks into service. But Mr McConville said that firefighters were told not to use equipment on fire trucks for training in case it broke; there was no backup. In fact, Mr McConville said, mandatory skills maintenance had not occurred across 22 components of training, because firefighters did not have adequate tools or equipment.
The ACT Government emphasised that half of the ACT Fire and Rescue pumpers were under two years old, and ACT Fire and Rescue could replace its pumpers every 10 years.
Mr McConville, however, said that the current crop of compressed air foam system tankers (an urban interface fire truck developed in Canberra) was 15 years old, and the committee overseeing their replacement had been told there was not enough money to replace them.
More firefighters needed
The ACT was short of firefighters, Mr McConville said. Only two of 12.7 firefighter day work positions agreed to be provided by 2024 had been appointed.
Mr McConville criticised interference by the ACT ESA in workforce planning over the last two decades: the ESA, he said, had delayed or stopped recruitment and promotion on several occasions, and impacted ACT Fire and Rescue’s ability to plan, train, manage the skills mix, develop capability, and manage overtime and fatigue.
Between 2013 and 2016, no firefighters were recruited at all, Mr McConville said, while only six firefighters were recruited in the 2018/19 financial year.
An ACT Government spokesperson said that ACT Fire and Rescue was undertaking a large recruitment. Ninety-two firefighters have been recruited since 2020, and 87 have graduated. Another 20 will commence later this month, taking the total to over 100 in just over two years – which represents more than 25 per cent of the firefighting workforce. ACT Fire and Rescue will continue to recruit as long serving staff retire and the service continues to grow.
Mr McConville, however, said that the latest recruits (the cohort graduated in December) were still being paid as recruits rather than as graduates.
Mr Mavity explained that the recruits graduated on 16 December, a week after the public service pay cut-off for Christmas (9 December).
“Plainly, I can’t submit the paperwork for their pay increase from recruit to graduated firefighter without them having graduated, because they may not pass,” Mr Mavity said.
He submitted the paperwork on 20 December, and the new cohort has been paid this week as full graduates.
Leave refused
Accrued leave remains unacceptably high, according to Mr McConville. Firefighters have been refused leave, for reasons including cost, while retiring firefighters were pressured last year to not take their accrued leave, and instead return to work or to end their employment and accept a payout of their leave.
“We are talking about the veterans of the 2003 fires, who, through under-resourcing, have not been able to take leave; and now at the end of their careers, they’re being told that they should accept the payout for that leave, and go,” Mr McConville said. “That is a most undignified end to illustrious careers.”
The leave requests in question, Mr Mavity said, are for annual leave at half pay for people who have already accrued excess leave, some in the range of thousands of hours. Leave is “generous”, Mr Mavity said: two months off a year. ACT Fire and Rescue has 64 employees over 55 years old (16 per cent of the workforce); 25 (6 per cent) are or have been on long-term leave since 2019, and Mr Mavity assumes they will take leave until they retire.
“We’ve been very generous in letting those employees run down their entitlements,” Mr Mavity said, “but obviously, while they’re away on leave, they accrue more, and they hold positions that we can’t backfill, which exacerbates our staffing issues.”
Because ACT Fire and Rescue is short-staffed at several ranks, Mr Mavity has asked some employees to come back. “Some of them have been good enough to do so; some have said no.”
Overtime is also unacceptably high, Mr McConville claimed: $3 million for the half year to 31 December 2022.
Additionally, firefighters had not received annual medicals agreed under the EA, Mr McConville said.
Bushfire consultative bodies abolished
Bushfire consultative bodies have been abolished without explanation, Mr McConville said. The Emergency Services Operational Review Group (ESORG), established to bring together biannually representatives of all emergency services, staff, and volunteers, was abolished without any announcement in November 2020.
The Bush Fire Abatement Zone between the north-west and western perimeter of Canberra and the Murrumbidgee River and the foothills of the Brindabella Range, recommended by Ron McLeod’s Inquiry into the Operational Response to the January 2003 Bushfires and the Coronial Inquest, was also abolished.
The ACT Bushfire Council was abolished in 2021 against the will of its members, including rural land holders, Mr McConville said.
An ACT Government spokesperson stated that the Council was not replaced, but was enhanced to include members with expertise in climate change, storms, and floods, and renamed the Multi Hazard Advisory Council (MHAC).
“While the Council’s scope has expanded to all natural hazards, the Council continues to advise the Minister and the ESA on bushfire management,” the spokesperson said. “This is in line with the ACT Government’s ‘all hazards’ approach to emergency preparedness and response, consistent with key learnings from the 2019-20 bushfire season.”
Inquests delayed
The UFU is also concerned about delays to the coroner’s inquest into the 2020 bushfires. The coronial inquest has barely commenced, Mr McConville said, but will not hear evidence from the ACT ESA until April.
“The community should not have to wait for in the vicinity of three years to have questions answered about how it came to be that such a large expanse (37 per cent) of the ACT landmass was reduced to cinders,” Mr McConville said.
A government spokesperson said the Coroner’s inquiry was deferred to April 2023 due to the unavailability of the Coroner, and is beyond the control of the ACT Government.
Mr McConville noted that the Coroner’s inquiry into 2003 bushfires, 20 years ago, was completed three years and 11 months after the fires. The most senior bureaucrats (the six most senior officers of the Emergency Services Bureau and the Department of Justice and Community Safety) answered 1,108 times that they did not know or could not recall what occurred in the events leading up to and on 18 January 2003. The Coroner (3.13) remarked: “This apparent corporate loss of memory exacerbated the difficulty of establishing the facts of what occurred within the Emergency Services Bureau.”
Mr McConville considers that is typical of the “unaccountable and secretive organisational culture” of the Bureau and its current incarnation, the ESA, and shows why ACT Fire and Rescue must be made an independent statutory authority, with a direct line to the minister, “so that it is not encumbered by a bureaucratic structure which, when the time comes, can’t recall what happened”.
Next steps
Mick Gentleman, ACT Minister for Emergency Services, said that he would look at the aspects of the report the government can attend to at the most appropriate times.
“There are funding needs … for Fire and Rescue and for the ESA. We will continue to put pressure in cabinet for those funding opportunities as arise each budget time. But we have seen a good response from ESA in using the funds that are provided to them to ensure we are up to date, and we have the most modern equipment,” Mr Gentleman said.
The UFU are determined the government address their concerns – even if it means going through the Federal Court to enforce the Enterprise Agreement. The Fair Work Act (section 55) contains a civil remedy provision when an enterprise agreement contravenes the National Employment Standards.
“We stand committed to fight with everything that we have to deliver improvements to protect the community and to protect firefighter safety,” Mr McConville said.
“We will stand by that commitment just as we did in foregoing pay rises to deliver a legally binding agreement to build a fire station here. Unfortunately, we now have to give serious consideration to legal action against the government to hold it to these commitments. Because over the space of the last few years, we haven’t received adequate answers about any of these concerns.”
Mr Mavity said: “By any metric you choose from the Report on Government Services, we are the best performing fire service in Australia; we are the safest community in Australia in my view.
“We’re buying new trucks, we’re building new stations, we’re refurbishing old stations, we’re introducing medical screening, we’ve got new [personal protective equipment]; there’s massive investment in the fire service, and we recruit: we’ve got 87 new people in a 400-person organisation, with another 20 to start in a couple of days.
“It is a massive period of transition, and I think we are managing it very, very well. Sometimes, things don’t go to plan, but the objective remains the same, and my team are doing it excellently, in my view.”
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