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By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay
The Rural Fire Service has served an important role in the way rural communities have responded to fire and protected their homes and agribusinesses.
Over recent years, there has been some degradation of the service, and now the state government overhaul - that should have worked to improve rural communities’ capacity to respond to fire emergencies – seems to actively disempower the Rural Fire Service (RFS).
The RFS is an organisation of volunteers. They are people with excellent skills in containing fire and with extensive knowledge of their local landscape and managing fire outbreaks. They are professional land managers, who work their own agribusinesses in cane farming, grazing and other types of farming. They understand how fire can behave in their farming systems and the wider district. They understand how local weather conditions are important when considering a course of action to control a fire. They really are the experts in fighting their fires- they know the land best, and the RFS was set up in recognition of this.
Because they live where their RFS brigade is, they have skin in the game and the capacity to respond quickly and effectively. It is part of the nature of fire, that once it happens, response needs to be quick off the mark. The RFS takes this responsibility seriously, and as a result, the current system works effectively.
The RFS has been in need of structural improvement and increased support, but the legislation heading to parliament currently appears to miss the mark on the improvements the RFS has sought. The Disaster Management and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 brings together the Rural Fire Service and the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service under the one banner of the Queensland Fire Department.
Under the legislation, the RFS – best recognised as yellow trucks- is losing a great deal of its autonomy to the more urban-centric QFES (ie: red trucks). While the RFS sought to have a Rural Fires Board that had some weight, the panel that will eventuate would only have capacity as an advisory body. Section 130 states: “To remove any doubt, it is declared that the RFS advisory committee is not a decision-making body.”
The commissioner will now be empowered to dismiss an RFS volunteer.
These changes also call for an increased demand of RFS volunteers in training hours, from the present 12 months to three to five years. Safety is important, and training is always valuable, but not if it makes it impossible for those volunteers to have their existing skills and capabilities recognised and be empowered to take actions and make decisions during active fire incidents. These are all disincentives to volunteering.
Fire emergencies can be highly fluid situations that demand deep local knowledge and the capacity to act quickly.
The legislation means that they will be led by the professional firefighting arm of the Queensland Brigade, and the commissioner has the right to determine who would lead the management of a fire incident.
Someone can have all the professional training under the sun but still not be the best equipped with specific knowledge and understanding to best know how to fight a bushfire.
In drafting legislation, there was only one week for the RFS and the broader community to respond. The legislation is being rushed, and that will be to the detriment of rural and regional Queensland.
We live in a time of increasingly extreme weather. Anything that reduces a rural community’s capacity to respond to this is at the very least, foolhardy.
It is our great concern that the changes will impact on growers and graziers to their detriment. It is a slap in the face to rural communities and the RFS, that have effectively served their communities for many years. The legislative changes, if passed in Queensland Parliament, will be a disaster for the RFS and rural communities, and bigger disasters will follow.
