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.
