 Good morning all, we'll get started I think. So just acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and their elders past and present. Thank you all for coming along this morning. What we're going to do is a bit of a tag team effort between Jamie and myself. What we go through essentially some of the fire season preparedness and there's been some, and I'll talk about it in a bit of movement in the forecasting of what's going to happen this summer. So I thought it's important that we give you that briefing. Jamie will give you a bit of an understanding of some of the preparedness work. We will then probably talk a little bit about what's happening in the reform space, but I get a sense most people are over that. So unless you really want to, we'll give you a brief overview and Liz is here if you need any further details and then we'll just open up with broad questions. So fair bit to get through in our allocated half an hour. I've got no idea how to work this machine thing here. So someone might help me through it. So thanks, Jamie. Oh, you're as good as I am. Arrow on my keyboard. Okay, got it. So preliminary outlook, so that's what I just talked about. So essentially what's happened is that the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the CRC people, all the scientists come together. They put together their sense of what's happening from a weather point of view, what's happening with the dryness and then do some forecasting and come up with what they think is a prediction for this particular summer. They do a couple of different iterations of this and then there's a formal launch of it at the AFAC conference. So it's kept pretty tight and other than the fact we're videoing today so we can share it with the world, we're not telling anyone else. So that's a joke. Thanks for liking your good idea. So the reality is, as you would know, that 2000, so this is a reflection on, so this time last year we're in flood. Essentially most of the people were heavily involved in floods, so lots of water around and around the state. So let's push the button. The interesting thing for us, and this is the rainfall deficit from an Australian perspective, is that you can see now pretty well where it's almost the driest on record of rainfall deficiencies. And if you have a look particularly in Western Australia, so interesting enough you could suspect that they are also looking at an early fire season as we are. And you can come right down into the Victoria. And I think there's a better map of showing Victoria in more detail here. And you get a sense here that, particularly that western part of Gippsland that you look at, you look at the northeast areas as well. And all of a sudden for those that have been around a while that you can see where we've had campaign fires in the northeast and where we've had campaign fires in Gippsland, we've got high levels of deficient rainfalls. Now, Moses here, I notice if I get anything wrong, you're the bugger that keeps me honest, mate. So you feel free to jump in at any time. So just be aware, so that's already out. So it is very much dependent of what happens moving forward. The other, so we look at all this sort of data that's available. And essentially what this data says to us, and I'll take you to the bottom line there, is that it essentially says that with the cropping situation and the huge growth potential within spring, it gives increased fire load. It also brings forward a potential for fire starting as early as October. So what that is sort of early indications here is saying from a partial point of perspective that spring growth in the north and central grain areas brings with it fuel loads brings with it potential fire. What that says to us is that there is a potential this year for an early start to a fire season, particularly in Gippsland. The Bureau, so that's from the fuel load point of view, the Bureau then says that the warmer daytime temperatures are expected from now on moving forward. I think, cross, some people would say, give us something bloody cold, lower than average rain, which we're already seeing. So it's crystal ball stuff, so it's a bit hard to tell, and you'd probably know that we quite often get October rains. And the water storages obviously are, sorry, the waters, I'm not allowed to move around. The water storages are obviously low already, so if we don't get rain, that that's probably not likely to change. Now I guess the interesting thing for, sorry, the interesting for us then is it's, you know, it's sort of like the Bureau. You know, there's an average chance it's going to rain, and there's an average chance it's not going to rain, so it could rain and it could not rain. But I guess the issue for us is compared to last year we're in flood in a nutshell, compared to last year there's going to be a lot more crop in the space, so you could get some, you know, we had a lot of head of fires last year. We suspect that the fire season potentially could start earlier. Interesting enough, I've asked for the fire seeds and preparedness work to be brought forward on the back of that, DELP and Parks Victoria, to be fair probably doing their own analysis, have done the same thing, so they're also bringing, so all the fire services in the state are bringing their fire season preparedness work forward. And it is more likely that we will have some sort of fire season this year than particularly we did last year, just on the back of what we know right now. I guess that's it in a nutshell. So on the back of that we're doing, and I think there is a video that's online that you can have a look at, and you can hunt for that. On the back of that, I wanted to ask Jamie to come along and talk about some of the preparedness work that we're doing, both from an operational perspective and from a community preparedness perspective. So over to you, Jamie. Cheers. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everybody. So I just wanted to give you a bit of a rundown on the service delivery preparedness program, which will be foreign to a lot of people, but it's a program that ensures that the CFA is prepared for the fire season. And it's not just brigades out in the districts, but it's our districts and regions and also headquarters directorates that support operations throughout a fire. The idea of the STPP is to provide assurance to the chief officer and CEO that CFA is prepared to meet its legislative responsibilities. So the way this works, as Steve mentioned, we've brought that forward by at least a month or six weeks so that we're on top of things and we can have a report prepared by October. The program consists of an audit and inspection. So the DCOs will come out to the districts and regions with myself and the assistant chief officers present. Prior to that, we will have compiled a list of documentation that's required to be cited by our team as a way of proving, you know, evidentially that some of our preseason readiness and preparedness activities have taken place. And what we've done this year and off the back of last year is tried to streamline that a lot so that the visits from the deputy chiefs can be a lot more productive and have a constructive conversation with the operations staff in the field. And we found that's a really good way of getting feedback prior to the season about some of the risks and issues that they're facing leading up to summer. So all that's great, but I think you're probably all sitting there going, well, what do you actually do? What are you looking at? What are we actually trying to achieve? So some of the things, I won't go through everything because it's a long-winded exercise, but some of the things we look for are the IMT, so Incident Management Team capability and planning. We ensure that the districts and regions are complying with their readiness requirements based on the fire danger index. So at certain days of a certain FDI, districts are required to be ready for different levels of response. So that might include the strike teams being on standby, fire investigation teams being on standby, pre-determined dispatch of aircraft being ready and a number of other things. We make sure that the major events, plans are up to date, business continuity plans are up to date, the local mutual aid plans are in place, so they're local arrangements with not only the districts that border each district, but the other agencies involved there as well. And then some of our operational readiness out in the field. So right now, across the districts and regions, despite it being freezing cold and wet, there are people out there checking staging areas, they're checking landing sites for aircraft, there's IMT refresher training going on, they're checking ICCs and RCCs, local command facilities, the district command centre for the systems and processes and training and personnel, so everything's up to scratch. And I know it can feel a bit strange when you're looking outside and it's pouring with rain and you're getting prepared for summer, but this is a process that takes a little bit of time and we want to ensure that by October that everything is ready to go. And I think that is essentially STPP in a nutshell, if there are any questions, feel free to ask. Yeah, so the question is how long this process takes to do around the state. This year we're aiming to have it done in six weeks. In the past it's gone from two months to maybe ten weeks, but we're really trying to consolidate it this year because we've got a pretty short window of opportunity. So Jamie, I might have one. So we do that for the brigades and regions because this year you've broadened it out to the functional and directorates within CFA. Can you explain some of that stuff? Yeah, so this year there's always been a requirement for headquarters directorates to be involved in the STPP process. STPP? Service Delivery Preparedness Program. Thank you, Chief. And so this year we've put a greater emphasis on the executive. So they're the executive directors of each directorate to be accountable for some of those readiness actions within their teams. So through the executive we've established a reporting regime which is a fortnightly reporting requirement and there are a number of issue readiness activities that they need to undertake and report on fortnightly. So some of those, for example, are the ICT support arrangements, our community engagement and education activities and plans. That includes the signing off of neighbourhood safer places, our community fire refuges all get tested and there's a bunch of legislative responsibilities we have to abide by there as well. Our infrastructure support arrangements, that's quite intense. That goes from everything from vehicle readiness to the State Logistics Centre Readiness. There are State Control Centre exercises. Our MOUs, our Memorandums of Understanding will need to be updated and we ensure that all our doctrine is current and relevant. Any other questions for Jamie? So thanks Jamie. So to sum up for mine, if you go to the season that was not last year but the year before, we lost houses in Lancefield in October. That's probably what, six maybe eight weeks away. So they put it in perspective. So from now on we'll be doing everything from at brigade level, ensuring that every crew does a burn over drill for their safety. There's a hazardous tree video and program that every crew must go through, that at district level they'll be doing exercises right through to directorates. We're asking directorates to help and assist to do their share of the load in a fire season preparedness sense. So I guess what we're here today to say, hey, there's some science there that says it could be on and it's time for us to get ready and it's important that people here in headquarters are fully connected with our thinking. So that's probably the main message from a fire season point of view. Before I open up then for broader questions, I'll speak just a little bit of background on what's happening in the reform sense. So you would have seen yesterday that the Select Committee released what they called the interim report. Now an interim report that we're expecting to be a final report but essentially what that was was a list of all the transcripts of all the conversations so it was quite an extensive interim report. The final report probably is still going to come next week. From that you could expect there'd be some sort of government response to that final report from the Select Committee and we suspect the Select Committee if you still with me will have a major and a minor report but nonetheless there'll be a government response to that. At which case there'll be a potential chance for amendments to the legislation. It could either not go up at all. It could go up as it is or it will go up with some amendments and then we'll know we think probably by the end of August what will happen as far as the reform was concerned. So just be aware that that's going through a process. You'd see a little bit on response times. We were asked and provided the Select Committee with response times and there was some discussion. That was for our classification five and four brigades because they're the bigger urban brigades and that allows us to compare like brigades with like brigades. So that's probably what's happening in is there anything else to add Liz in that space but probably what's happening in that. So in a sense it's a good old fireways hurry up and wait and we'll find out what's happening in the reform. So our message in the interim is in a sense probably the one you've already heard which is hey the politicians can get on and make their decisions as far as what they're going to do in regard to legislative reform and change. Our role will be whatever happens to continue to ensure that the safety of Victorians is not compromised and we're able to continue to provide a service into a summer period that could be quite operationally busy for us. So I'm happy to take and I've got Liz here on IR stuff who will have a bit more knowledge Jamie on preparedness work. We haven't talked about what the community and so we actually not only preparing us what we've talked about largely today we haven't talked about and maybe that's for another time what we do in community fire guards in briefings and then sort of ramping that up and you're always damned if you do and damned if you don't because it's what the girl that cried wolf. The reality is you know as soon as you do that it buckets down rain we have floods and you know we called it too early. So it's too early to make the call but certainly we're getting ready to make the call if you understand what I'm trying to say and in any communities prepared in a sense. So we haven't done that pulled that trigger just yet and I am just waffling on if you haven't picked it up because no one's sticking the hand up for questions so I'm going oh Gregory thank you. So parallel to 2006 2006 2003 2006 were campaign campaign years that went for months of firefighting. So basically Rob's question was have people around here in this room and and watching this one an opportunity to get involved. Obviously at the State Control Centre people are on rosters and anything from warnings and advice media through to situations planning and resources and a number of activities and interesting when you looked at the map there before we need to cast an eye on interstate support and for me the Canadians have already come back to another rotation of support into Canada as well so the interstate and international liaison type teams as well so there's a number of activities just within the State Control Centre. A number of regional facilities ICCs and regional control facilities within CFA that are within hitting distance from here as well and I'm talking about it could be the the Lilydale regional office or kangaroo ground etc etc but look that the first protocol is your line manager. There are some teams that that give tremendous support to the extent that it almost doesn't allow us to run our core business because everybody wants to go and there's other teams that we probably get hardly any support into the state. So it is about as Greg said before ensuring you get line management support so I would suggest the best way of doing it is see what's available have a talk around speak to your line manager we might be able to put something out and let people know through we'll put something out Rob. Any other questions or thoughts? Hey look quick meetings good meeting thanks for your time this morning if there's no more I do appreciate you coming down we'll just do these every now and again to make sure you kept in the loop have a good day. Cheers.