An arrogant Queensland fire brigade’s bureaucracy is destroying the often vital volunteer rural fire service it is supposed to be supporting, through authority overreach and disrespect for volunteers.
That is the essence of a submission last Friday (7 February) from Rural Fire Brigades Association Queensland to the state government’s inquiry into volunteering, an inquiry aimed at addressing the loss of thousands of volunteers in essential services, from running elections to Meals on Wheels and fire fighting – services which keep Queensland functioning and often save lives.
The submission makes clear that many volunteer services survived for 100 years without bureaucratic domination, but are now in dangerous decline.
It complains of dominance by a Brisbane-based administrative structure which routinely withholds potentially life saving data on available resources.
Lives are in danger across 93 per cent of Queensland’s land area because “experience and local knowledge (are) walking out the door,“ it says.
Oppressive regulation and paperwork had caused a decline in service capability because of a “public service ’circle of self validation’“ which meant ideas were turned into policy and procurement without any input from the rural fire brigades or volunteers on the front line.
As a result of administrative secrecy, volunteers had no idea “of age, gender, general location, vehicle type or number of brigades by region or area,“ meaning volunteer brigades, tasked with saving lives and property, were denied essential information on what tools they had at hand or nearby.
Apparently regarding volunteers as outsiders, it has told RFBAQ general manager Justin Choveaux “the Queensland Fire Department is not legislatively or industrially obliged to talk to any external organisation that is not a union“.
This is why, Mr Choveaux says, “brigade numbers are falling and local empowerment has disappeared.“
In a submission unanimously adopted by the elected RFBAQ management committee, which met in Gympie last Friday, the volunteer group has called for the government to jettison an allegedly out-of-touch Brisbane administration and to create “a fully independent Rural Fire Service Queensland.“
It called for this body to be controlled by the people who fight fires in regional and rural Queensland, to have their local knowledge and experience recognised and to have the service run by rural fire brigades, fire wardens and rural fire staff with a chief who reports “directly to the minister.“
The submission also complains of a “belief that paid firefighters know more than volunteer firefighters (with) the commensurate dismissal of local knowledge in fire, floods and cyclones.“
The legislated bureaucratic structure also is accused of stifling dissent or free speech within volunteer ranks, the “endless pursuit of brigade members over trivial complaints that drag on for years, the inability of people to have their paperwork for joining a brigade processed in a timely manner (and dangerously) overweight trucks.“
“A volunteer community based organisation is being administered by a paid, paramilitary city centric organisation,“ the submission says.
It calls for this to be replaced by “a return to the ethos of community defence under an independent statutory authority and board comprising brigade members“.
