 Today I want to talk to you about the next steps in creating our future together at CFA. It's fair to say that there's never a quiet time in the CFA and that change is the only constant that we have. It's my preference and that of the board and the executive that we change because we want to, because we need to and because it makes a better CFA. In this phase of creating our future together we're looking very very closely at how we can improve the efficiency of our support services that enable us to deliver those critical emergency services on the ground. The work that our brigades do tirelessly day in, day out. We know we can do better. We know that our efficiency levels can improve that we can reduce duplication, that we can improve business processes across CFA and that in doing that we can better support our frontline service providers. We need to keep pace with what's changing around us. We can't rely on what was good enough yesterday to be good enough tomorrow. And in all of our support services we know that we can make changes that are beneficial in that regard and we have to live within our means just as everyone else is and we'll do that also. We restructured CFA in the last couple of years as we bought a new capability in terms of the executives as we enshrined the chief officer with 60,000 people under him to deliver the services in accordance with the recommendations of the VBRC. I think we've got that right and I think it's working quite well. Now as I mentioned earlier we need to look at our support services. How can we better do that? We're gaining greater efficiencies in the way that we support service delivery. We'll first of all reduce duplications whether they're in processes or in other ways across the business. We'll embed new, better, consistent processes across CFA. We'll provide support services to our 20 districts. They will be unchanged and we'll continue to do that in a way that meets their needs. The service support provision will know no boundaries. It will be provided where and how it's needed rather than being regionally affixed or HQ affixed. In fact we won't be talking much about HQ anymore. We'll be talking about the State Service Support Centre. One of the cornerstones of this change however is we will consolidate our number of regions. We'll come from eight regions down to five regions. This gives us a good alignment with other government departments who have done similar changes but it also gives us a better arrangement in terms of command and control for the Chief Officer and a very clear setting for us in which to support that delivery that comes from Fire and Emergency Management. When I talk about support services I mean those services that are needed every day across CFA. Whether it's at headquarters whether it's in a region, whether it's in a district, we need people and culture support. We need financial capability. We need training and development capability. They'll be provided from regional or central resources but they will be coordinated from the central capabilities that we have. By changing the way that we deliver support services we'll be able to be more efficient. We'll reduce some of our costs. At the same time we'll provide better quality outcomes. We'll have much much better support to service delivery and we'll get a raft of benefits in terms of the capability that we develop in a variety of people across the state that we don't have now and we'll maintain our support to volunteers and our brigades and we'll maintain our training capacity for all of our people. I indicated that the number of districts and the boundaries of districts will be unchanged. I also said that we'll reduce the regions from 8 to 5. That consolidation is very important to us and very important to our service delivery. At the moment both Grampians and Barwon South West would probably remain unchanged but certainly we'd look at joining Southern Metro with Gippsland out of Metro North West with Lodden Malley and Eastern with Hume. Along the way though we'd value your views starting now. Consulting with you is one way that we can get the best understanding of the front-end as to what's needed and how it will work and we're willing to continue to take that feedback over the next year or two as we deliver the outcomes. This is just another change at CFA but an important one. It involves a great many people. There's been some anxiety and some concerns in people over recent times with a view of some errant information out in the public that says that CFA is going to apply packages and get rid of some of its people. Can I assure you today there are no packages. Where we have reductions they will come only by natural attrition. Through the process we need our people to stay on board with us. At the end of the day the objective here is the communities we serve.