The Public Service Association of NSW is calling on the NSW Government to halt its proposed merger of the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and the State Emergency Service (SES) until proper community and stakeholder consultation has taken place.
Association General Secretary, Stewart Little, said the Premier needed to pause and realise that if he didn’t move cautiously and collaboratively he was literally risking the lives of people across the state.
“Neither the RFS or the SES have significant support staff resources as it is and it’s hard to see how merging their functions will improve matters,” he said.
“The Rural Fire Service and the State Emergency Service were designed to operate separately for a reason – they serve completely different functions.
“Once again the government has stomped in with an expedient plan without bothering to consult with public sector workers or the communities affected. We’ve seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well,” Little said.
The NSW Government recently released and responded to the 28 recommendations of the independent Flood Inquiry, commissioned in response to the major floods earlier this year.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the recommendations provided a blueprint for change and practical actions to ensure communities and government could prepare for floods in the future and recover faster.
“Work will start on implementing a number of the recommendations immediately, while other recommendations will require further work and be implemented in stages, with ongoing community consultation and engagement,” he said.
Of the 28 recommendations, the NSW Government has supported six recommendations and given in-principle support to 22 recommendations.
“Of those supported in principle, further work will be undertaken on implementation including consultation with key stakeholders,” the Premier said.
One of those in-principle recommendations is to merge SES and RFS head office and corporate service functions, while maintaining their separate identities, and the united corporate support structure would be under the command of the RFS.
Leaders of the SES and RFS on the Central Coast say there will be no obvious changes to how their units operate at a local level.
Deputy Commander of Gosford SES Unit, Werner Klumpp, said that (based on) what very little was known at this stage, he wasn’t expecting any merger to happen at the local level.
“What it’s meant to achieve, how it’s going to work – the Inquiry report apparently doesn’t have a lot of detail either of how it’s to be implemented and what the benefits are supposed to be,” he said.
RFS Central Coast District Manager, Superintendant Viki Campbell, said she understood it be a “back of house” merger to streamline the strategic and support services at head office on a statewide level.
“To the best of my knowledge, there will be no obvious change locally, the RFS and the SES will operate independently and, as always, help each other out,” she said.
“There’ll be an opportunity for us to share capabilities from head office to make sure that each agency has the best available resources between the two.
“From a local perspective I don’t think you’ll see anything different – it will be the head office functions that’ll be getting streamlined and merged,” Campbell said.
Further detail on the implementation of all 28 recommendations will be released later this year.
The report can be found at: https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/projects-and-initiatives/floodinquiry
Sue Murray