 And certainly the number of people that would have been exposed would be significantly less. They didn't tend to have the large numbers of full-time staff or relatively large numbers of full-time staff that Fiskville did. So I think the issues there are considerably lower level. What are down-ramp countries needed to have other ground authorities around the country? Well, prior to the establishment of Fiskville and certainly prior to the establishment of any of the regional training grounds, it was fairly common practice back in the 50s and 60s for local brigades just to go out and practice in a local dry dam. They'd find some material that would burn, put it in, light it up for practice and put it out. And that was fairly common practice, I think, through the 70s and perhaps into the 80s. I think that since then, basically the regional training facilities, plus of course Fiskville, have tended to be the principal areas where training has taken place. Mr Burke, do you think during those decades in action it was done through ignorance? What's behind it do you think that nothing was ever done? I've spoken to a few people who would have trained there and did train there through that period, people with good heads on their shoulders and good operators in their own right. The feeling I get is that it was what was expected or what was done in those times and that they didn't appreciate, for those who were being trained, they didn't appreciate the longer-term risks that maybe may go with the use of those types of chemicals. And I think that Professor Joy in his report says that in the 70s you could expect that. He says in the 80s maybe that could still continue. But he has been very, very clear that from the later part of the 80s and into the 1990s, it just was not acceptable. The impacts were known, the consequences were clear and it should not have happened. Mr Burke, there's a lot of concern about the safety of the training base now going forward. Can you assure people that are working there that it is safe? I mean there's talk of toxic chemicals buried there, that the water is contaminated. What can you say of people who are concerned? What I can say is that we are sure that the Fiskville facility is safe. We know that from several processes we've run. So early after the news broke in December, so into January, we had some hygienists of high quality go through all of our training facilities. They came up with 34 relatively minor but nonetheless important issues we should attend to. 33 of those have been completed. One which is a statewide manual of approach for those facilities will be completed in the next few months. We've also had some experts working on the site to understand the issues that are there. They too have brought to us a sense of comfort around its safety. Professor Joy's own report and the 1,400 to 2,000 pages of attachments have been conducted by highly qualified environmental engineers and others and they say that the site is safe for use as it is but do implore us to do more investigation and to take more action on that site. I think that what will attract new trainees to the facilities, new volunteers to CFA is us being open, honest and changing our practices to one that capitalises on the Safety First initiatives that have been developed since 2000 post the Linton tragedy that have been deeply embedded in the operating end of the business that drive the design of our fleet of vehicles for instance so they're safe in bushfire and on the road and many other initiatives. The minimum training skills for people so that when they come to CFA they are aware of chemicals, they are aware of impacts of those natures. So I think that the movement that we're talking about is seeking to become a world leader in terms of the way we do OH&S and in the way that we care for our environment that will attract people to CFA. Do you think this will affect numbers of volunteers? People obviously feel let down by the CFA. We've had some very difficult times as you would know so Black Saturday was one of those times. After Black Saturday the numbers of volunteers increased and has since stabilized to around about the same number it's been for the last decade which is about 58,000 volunteers. We'd say to all the people out there in Victoria considering volunteering please look at CFA. It's an extremely rewarding contribution to your community an extremely rewarding contribution to yourself. What do you think? Sorry, would you take the chance now to say how sorry you are to the people who claim at the moment that they were sick as a result? Certainly and can I say that we are deeply sorry for what people CFA people, members, community and others in that area are feeling. It could simply be anxiety. It could simply be they don't know what to expect and it could be because they're ill and they could be feeling that the information that's being provided in Professor Joy's report could lead them to feel that they were affected by what happened in the practices at Fisville. So whether it's just a plain concern, whether it's doubt, whether it's anxiety, whether it's real health injury we're very sorry for those things. And we will take responsibility for the impacts on our people into the future. Professor can you actually identify in your report that there was negligence on behalf of the CFA management? What we identified was that CFA were very slow during the late 80s and early 90s to really catch up with the big change that had taken place in the regulatory environment, particularly in relation to occupational health and safety, the storage and management of dangerous goods and also impacts on the environment. In the early 90s they were starting to get messages from the grassroots from some of their own staff in the dangerous goods area from some of the staff out at Fisville who were concerned about practices in the past and storage of materials and they were slow to pay attention to this. Eventually when the area was redeveloped in the late 90s it did reflect those concerns but it should have happened much earlier. So is it as slow as another firefighting authority to the CFA? The limited amount of work we were able to do in that area would indicate that some of the other states and some of the overseas agencies were ahead of CFA at that time whereas ironically back at the start when Fisville opened and probably in the 70s and early 80s in many ways Fisville was ahead of the game. Professor how would you categorise the management's attitudes towards these sorts of things in the 70s and as you say in the late 80s and 90s? In the 70s and 80s it just didn't seem to figure in their thinking and that's not all that surprising particularly in the 70s as I think Mick's indicated. Many of the people who were involved down at Fisville and training at Fisville came out of an agricultural background and if you look at the way ag chemicals were handled in the 1970s it was quite unacceptable in terms of modern standards. So I think the point was that in the 70s it was very much a creature of the times and it just didn't figure as a significant issue or concern on anyone's radar. As you move into the 80s as has been mentioned there started to be some concerns raised and by the late 80s it was becoming quite apparent that more attention should have been paid to this area. After there was an inquiry out to Ash Wednesday wasn't this issue dealt with in 1983 or 1984 after Ash Wednesday? Is this for me or for Mick? Well, did that come up in your report? That was a time when we really looked at fire body practices like we did after Black Saturday after Ash Wednesday we did go out and did that this issue come up then? I think the lessons that came out of Ash Wednesday and I may well be wrong and Mick's been a better position to comment on that were more operational in nature. I'm not sure that attention was greatly focused on the training side of it and similarly after Linton I think the focus was very much on what went wrong, what went wrong in terms of communication what went wrong in terms of physical infrastructure rather than necessarily was there something essentially wrong with the training and even if the focus had been on training I think it might have led to the conclusion well we need even more realistic training and remember one of the things that Fiscal in the 70s that drove this was the desire for realistic training realistic training could save lives in the field. This is probably one better for you because it's out of my period of the investigation, Mick. So the recommendations about further soil and groundwater and surface water testing are about the preliminary site assessment which indicates that the historic use of the site has seen some contaminants environmental contaminants reside there to what extent is not known. The groundwater in that area is very deep. The potential that there are buried drums gives rise to concern about whether material has moved through to the groundwater table. The use of petroleum products on the site gives room to concern about whether they have to move through the soil profile and going down towards groundwater. It's a pretty standard exercise then to go back to understand the movement of groundwater in the area to understand the conditions of soils and to make determinations about those things and then to remediate where required.