 It's great to be here this morning and this is since I've been in the job the third time I've had the opportunity to talk at the the Royal Press Club and Ed thank you for that. It is a great organisation and something that I know you lead and lead extremely well. To your partners and there's lots of them if you look at those sponsors up there there's some of those that are actually iconic to Victoria and have been for many years and we're just talking about the warnable cheese and butter factory of what that's actually means to warnable and if you think of that as just one of those industries that are undergoing a fair bit of change and challenges and no different I suppose if you were from Shepparton and talked about SPC they are iconic companies but it also shows what Victoria is in its sense of focus on community I think that's something if you don't if you've never experienced that rural country town ownership of what is the underlying social and it is social and the economics is something that is very special to Victoria and I think that goes on to even acknowledge what our volunteer services not only emergency services but the broader group that work in emergency management will do for us and we should never underestimate what that is what they give and if we ever lost it I don't think we'd ever rebuild it which is something we could protect and no doubt Mick Burke and those CEOs of agency certainly do make sure that we protect and grow what is being built by our fathers before us today I thought probably the best way was to cut this into a couple of things one was to talk about the last few years I'd say the last three years but for some that come off the rule which is probably five a little bit about the next three years and then a little bit about the season that we're about to face now it's interesting when you look back three years I've been in this role just over three years now and there's lots that have changed and the mandate within the emergency services or emergency management sector has been very strong that they want change so the directors the CEOs the chiefs have all wanted change and it's interesting when you talk to the people on the grassroots they actually want change too one of our challenges in any change is getting the middle managers the middle group to actually accept understand and drive the change that's not criticism of our middle manager we've got great middle managers but they are actually the gatekeepers of many things we do so our change program the bottom wants change the tops leading change it's how we actually get the middle to accept and understand the changes that are needed and how much they're put in place and I'll show as I go through my speech this morning some examples of what that actually means to us one thing we did do three years ago and it was the CEOs of the SES MFB then DSE or depth secretary of DSE and SES was to talk about refocusing what we are and those that have heard me speak before it's very simple it's all about community and we've got some very basic diagrams that reset the frame we're looking at that the committee was front and center of anything we did and I got this it's almost like a dartboard I suppose I put the community well and truly in the center and I know we have tested ourselves and tested other programs are safe it's not about the community why are we even doing it and I think it's been quite fundamental to actually reset the business the focus and you might say that's strange for organizations that are there to protect communities that we have to refocus it there was an opinion from some and the Royal Commission was one of those that we had become somewhat of an internalised or internalistic in the way in which we we were operating and you could you could see evidence you could actually scratch the place and see that it was about the organization and not about the outer bit and the partnership with communities so so that was something that that I think has been fundamental in the three in the three year journey the second one in an operational sense and the first year was first year of my appointment was very much about setting some new direction in operations and one of those on the on the 1st of December 2010 which was the official day that I took up I've been there three months prior attempting to get some idea and some clarity of what I was doing or to do was to set in place what we call the state control priorities I won't go through them but there is there are six priorities that talk about primacy of life talk about issuing information to communities that's useful for them to use in a timely way talks about protection of critical assets of community assets residential property economics in communities and environmental assets and values now really easy for me to rattle them off what what I would say though and others will test me here is that has been hugely successful in the sense that people now talk it back to us now CFA have used CFA as a test bed CFA is a huge organization in any change in the organization the size of CFA is a minimum of two years by the time Mick thinks up a great idea and gets it out there and the person on the ground at Rupanya or Brutham or Malakuta actually probably resonates understands it and does it it's it's a two-year journey as a minimum we've seen that those control priorities not only in fire but flood we wrote them in a way that wasn't about fire we wrote them in a more generic way are now being quoted back to us so interesting enough 18 months on we were very strong on it that these control priorities reset the way in which we operated and operated together was a fundamental about change and people took to it now if you stop and think about that that's a bit of a test about change if they had to rejected that and said no we don't want this new new method of operation we want to stay where we where we've been in 2008 2007 1987 1977 we would have a fundamental issue of what our workforce the people we work with and for could cope with to me that was only one example a bit of a litmus test about the level of change and the desire to pick up new ideas and strong leadership from all of us in in leadership positions to take forward and champion to an outcome likewise in a control sense in an operational sense we put in something called the line of control which clarified the single way of operating for all of us really important again it took a little bit of work to do because we're really challenging those principles of how some agencies has operated for decades and in many of the agencies the churn that turnover of people is not huge so someone that's been there 30 years has been there every day of the 30 years which means they've got some very strong understood principles they work with and work for and we were challenging those so the line of control which I won't go into detail but it is about how we deal with incident region and state level and make sure it's clarity very clear it's so it's it's got clarity to it and it has purpose and last year which was probably well was the biggest year since 09 in a fire sense that line of control stood the test of time extremely well and now we just need to do some finer points but the thing about the line of control it was the mechanism to ensure we were broader than those that just have written blue lights on their vehicles it was the change to make sure education and health and all those other partner agencies were in there including the media very important we've had agreements about emergency broadcasters but I think it was a one-way we pushed to you through the line of control and the mechanisms around it has been absolutely fundamental in the way in which we operate and contribute some examples milk water we meet we met with Melbourne water yesterday morning at 7.30 and they were saying to us thank you for allowing us to be a major contributor to these control strategies of the state if you think about Melbourne water one of the biggest things that we need to protect in the state is water catchments water catchments are very particular very focused and under my under my leadership I do not want to burn the water catchments out at all I don't want to see water catchments black in any way it has a huge impact and there's people in the room that understand the water industry better than I it will have a huge impact impact on all Victorians particularly those that live in the metropolitan basin about water quality and what the yield is and it will be very expensive so from those sort of things you talk about our control priorities and that third one to about critical infrastructure and community assets all of a sudden those partnerships are really important they've had strong partnerships with DSC previously but this year we took Melbourne water right inside to make sure that they were connected all the way to the strategy and from their CEO right through to the person that's on the back of the fire truck the Melbourne water fire trucks out of Hillsville or anywhere else we have actually brought them in better that's only one example and it can go on parks Victoria and others so I suppose what I'm trying to say is there's been some risk taking in the last number of years but the risks I think were calculated understood and we're able to put structures in place collectively to ensure we're in a better place now from that the next the next period of time is interesting we've got a reform program that's under my legislation saw the fire services reform program the first year of that and mix here mix sits as a mick bergs it's a key player in that the first year I think we were trying to get what change really was the second year we we scoped it and understood a little bit about it we've actually now started to really see some change in the sector and for example our our IT systems are the way in which we connected across multiple agencies have always been agency mount that is CFA has theirs MFB has theirs SES has theirs some that's been a little bit connected but we've never had a true strategy it's been an opportunity not a strategy approach to do that we've now developed what we call vine the Victorian information network for emergencies it's been developed in a blueprint it's been developed in the architecture of how we want to operate and it's all about mobile devices cloud computing standards around the way we'll operate it's it's moved into a new direction now you might think it's strange I'll comment about that but traditionally we have invested as agencies and that's been the accepted way traditionally in the main the agencies have not been at the front of technology they've been at the middle or back of technology that is technology has run and then it's been implemented in the sector so anyone that understands from a from a volunteer point of view in another life they may be corporate people in a business and they volunteer in their own community they be saying you know pretty well back to pages and radio technology and the world moved a long way on where are you as an industry so we've taken time to build that and it's been a little bit difficult to build in the sense that someone's always got a bright idea someone's always seen something new to do and there's a tendency to keep investing so it's a little bit about how do we actually manage this to get the best outcome from the investment point of view not easy it's interesting though we've had Vine Victorian Information Network for emergency overseas so we took it to the States and and not over overselling it but we're testing with the Department of Homeland Security in Washington Fire Department New York New York Office of Emergency Management Homeland Security invested a huge amount of money after 9-11 into decision making so Massachusetts Institute at Boston one of the best labs that we would see about understanding the decision-making process so not just about an IT system but what do you need to put in front of people in the ways you put in front of them to make good decisions and that's that's the key to our systems how do we get our ins and controls to make good decisions and how do we actually give information to the community to allow them to make good decisions about their safety in a fire or flood or rescue whatever it is really important and MIT have done a huge amount of work under the leadership of the American government and then we went to Cal Fire California Fire who is the overarching fire department for California but California bigger and better than most have to have and the way in which the the states operate underneath their banner is 54 fire departments and some of those fire departments are huge so LA City LA County LA City in itself is you know protecting something I think about 80 million people LA County protects I think 12 million people so they're big fire departments and I was there in their summer and they were using what we call a new incident management system so a new generation incident command system is what they're using built on the same principles of what vine was so our vine about standards about mobile devices about cloud computing they built something similar interesting enough when they're using that as a test bed and look to actually bring that into Victoria hopefully in the next 12 months now that's a that's a big call but that's our aim is to look at something that we will bring in to the state as our single view of incident of the future so vine has got reality around interesting and I'm now being a bold and some might say other words starts with smart and a little word on the back that vine was said to us you know you've got the framework for the what the world network so vine they saw as wine and the Americans actually are very keen to use what we built hence yesterday the 19th I think it's yesterday or the day before the 19th of November in New York that was presented as a front and center piece by Homeland Security Melbourne University IBM research lab which is in Carlton and unfortunately we weren't able to talk about it but that was the front and center of a whole symposium in New York only two days ago so vine was sitting front and center but the whole reform program that's running in Victoria is now being seen on the other side of the world is something that's fundamental and interesting enough and this is when I say we're a little bit bold about this we've actually got something that others are watching with interest and Victoria is a very important part now of the emergency management world the global world that I don't think any of us started to want to do that but it's interesting how it's evolved that we are now the centerpiece of many things which is very important and probably the most important part of that is where we're going for many years and if I take you back 15 years our agencies worked a single agency so CFA was a very proud organization I spent 25 years of my life there and an organization that is actually extremely special MFB likewise a boutique and I say that nicely fire service looks after a small footprint but actually has a great brand MFB and likewise with deputy in a forest firefighting sense is seen in the Canadian and American the Northern American world as some of the best for a fire fire forest firefighters we could have anywhere in the world and it's interesting when they those forest fire agencies from across the other side of the globe look at us they always come to Victoria in preference to other states and that's because we have actually spent a huge amount of time over many decades to build a forest firing capability that others haven't got but would love to have that's all great all big ticks the next step though the white paper the government to put on the table is that we in the emergency services is about to move to the next step and it's an important step and it's a fundamental step so if you think about independent individual agencies operating 15 years ago the last five years been about the emergency service organizations those who've got red and blue lights to work together a lot better join them in systems in approach in style in connection and that's obviously one of my key responsibilities the next step though is the move to emergency management the emergency services to emergency management and it's not it's not transferring some names it's a fundamental step that is so significant for Victoria but we will we will lead not only Australia but the world in this step and when I say that it now takes us to where the planning the risk the resilience the capability the response the relief the recovery the regeneration the reinstatement all of those are words that are downstream normally in what we do under recovery are going to be put under one banner and the emergency management act of 2013 is draft and gone through the lower house and you can only hope that next week that parliament sits in a sensible way to actually continue the discussion in the upper house this piece of legislation is really important and sets the direction now that emergency management is no longer owned by those traditional emergency service organizations it's across government and across all of our partner agencies it moves into things that I won't get into detail this morning here but it moves to a consequence approach I again probably quite bold in saying this believe we're the only ones in the world leading this it's been leading some areas in terrorism but not in mainstream emergency management about focused on consequence not the incident itself have to manage the incident but the consequences is what drives the decision making and there are many examples of how we have been judged by media government and communities previously about those issues as simple as road road management traffic management where we lock things up for three weeks at a time because they smoke in the area and all of a sudden consequences on local communities are absolutely fundamental to their survivability I could use Harriet Ville this year as that Harriet Ville we ended up having a requested by a minister to do an investigation my opinion of Harriet Ville was nothing to do with the smoke in the sky all had to do with economics because the town was isolated the town that the person that owns a coffee shop had roadblocks in for three weeks and our messaging was you can't go past bright so on and so on what happened to that town if you're the person that owns the coffee shop and you rely on selling 30 cups of coffee every three days and you sell zero the bank manager after a couple of weeks asked about your cash flow and you'll start considering where you are so this whole issue about consequence that takes in the global understanding of what we're doing the economics the environment the social impacts is critical for us to do and I think we've done quite well in that space over the last number of years to move to there so it's about not just the emergency not just the impact of the emergency it's about the consequence of the emergency tourism Victoria Natalie's here with me today and Natalie spends a lot of time dealing with tourism Victoria where when I started this job they were angry with us seriously angry with us angry with the chief of DSC about plan burning angry with us about our messaging and we actually stopped one of the adverts the first year I was in on the 11th hour and changed the words in the ad the TV ad based on what tourism were putting to us because we were scaring Victorians and using language that that was not conducive to a good outcome for tourism but we can't compromise what is community safety as well so we need to get the balance so in those sort of things I think we've moved to a more mature discussion and we'll continue to do so to make sure that it is focused on consequence and this new act of parliament is very much actually spends a whole section about consequence management in emergency management from that I think that and I won't go there's much more you could talk about I mean absolute detail about the journey where we've been on but more importantly the journey we're about to embark interesting enough for for what is the new legislation just quickly it'll form what they call the Moonsie management Victoria as a as an organisational living in the Department of Justice there will be an emergency management commissioner which will replace the fire service commissioner so my job disappears and is replaced by an emergency management commissioner which I've been indicated by parliament that I'll fulfil that they'll also have an executive of the Moonsie management Victoria to run the business side of and that's really important to give the overarching support to the CEOs of the agencies and the the depth secretaries in the departments that have responsibilities. There's new council put in place that is chaired by the secretary of DPC so Premier and Cabinet and each of the secretaries of the departments sit at that table. Now that might be easy to say and you go another committee or a council really fundamental. This is the fundamental thing that says it's everyone's responsibility to lead a Moonsie management in the State of Victoria and not mine and not Mick Berks or Ewan Ferguson's or Shane Wright. It's all of the department's responsibilities and it's expected that each of the secretaries actually are in the room to have that discussion. So whether it's an education issue education is absolutely critical to us and not only the protection and and duty of care to children in fire but the messaging education and the infrastructure they operate likewise with health transport planning it goes on and just in the fire footprint alone without going to the broader emergencies it is complex. Think about the things that sit on the table today and those that are in the media will know this. Plan burning often comes up as how much do we achieve is the right numbers where does it go. Land use planning where we live the building arrangements of how we operate bushfire management overlay. Ninety eight percent that have applied for planning permits have actually had them approved. Two percent are either in a process of VCAT or somewhere else but it's interesting that two percent shouldn't be underestimated that's a small figure it's still quite a large number of people that have problems building and what is the new building arrangements of the state. It goes on to information systems we will be judged rightly so by the community the media and government on the way in which we put new information systems into push information out which I'll talk about in a moment because we do have some new things there that we release soon and it goes into things like community refuges it goes into things like complacency in communities. So those issues just in a fire footprint that we've already had a chat at the council about if you think of the things I just named I can't fix those I can bring them to the council and talk to them about it but if it's a land use planning issue it's the secretary of planning if it's a plan burning issue it's the secretary of deputy in public land that is let alone what we do in private land in in hazard reduction and it goes on so you can see I think what I'm describing you EM is no longer those that have got red and blue lights on their on their vehicles at all EM now is a cross government in partnerships with government goes into business and reaches right into our corporate partners such as the Telcos Telstra and others are critical to what we do the water agencies the power agencies power lines in itself comes up the Royal Commission is a key issue significant work being done in power I spend a fair amount of my time in the power industry working with them to understand risk in our appropriate interventions so we live in a fire world pretty complex take on all those other emergencies and it tells you we're in a a good space a new space and a space that's right to be there all right now I might go to the season now I've got this strategy that I talk as long as I can end to make sure we minimize questions because Darren's writing lots of questions there that I've got at all the season the season's an interesting season if if you've ever heard me speak elsewhere I'm not one to try and scare Victorians at all I think that's the wrong strategy to go into the scare tactics of scaring and and being over over zealous in the fire world however this summer the summer season and that's important what I've just said the summer season it's not the bush fire season it's not the grass fire season it's the summer season and what summer brings victoria is the risk of fire but it also brings other risks if you're the chief old officer it brings heat in some parts the state will bring the frustration of dust in other parts it will bring the issue because of heat that it could be challenging the infrastructure particularly the power infrastructure so we shouldn't get lost that the the only risk we face is bushfire bushfire is certainly a dominant factor but again like I said we work as close with Rosemary Lister as the chief health officer in everything we do and I'd speak to Rosemary on a very regular basis and Rosemary is an absolutely fantastic chief health officer about what are we doing in heat because our messaging around heat or fire sometimes relate to each other so that's really important about the summer season this year in a fire context it's a new resting season July the warmest July I won't say on record but for many years August a very short snow season four weeks in some cases if you're in the snow industry you would have been worried this year that was you know the best you might have got out of it was five weeks we've seen rain we've seen warm weather we've seen a connection across what is the spring season that's conducive to good growth in the grasslands and in particular the grasslands if the bureau were here and they painted the story of the last three years and think about last three years we've had floods we've had dry seasons but the fact is that we still have not seen the soil dryness in some parts of the state go back to pre drought conditions in the western side of the state central and western side it is back in in soil dryness to around about 2006 which was mid the drought now think about what that means if I would talk about the derail fire which was I think the 27th of March or 28th of March at the end of our fire season very aggressive fire intensity was of significance lost houses did not lose lives people moved away from the fire and I think that is the lucky bit they moved away from the fire they actually moved it was a day that was uh that spiked and on for two hours we believe it reached a in a forest fire day and you're next well over 100 which means it was in the code red category of fire danger ratings but the forecast showed it was sitting below that but it spiked for a couple of hours and had a very intense firefight that area hasn't really changed if you go down there now it's green the dam's full there's probably a bit of water sitting around but it hasn't had the saturating rains to see that country change dramatically so it is back in that 2000s soil moisture content and that's consistent across the west of the state and central victoria i was at erica the other day with melbourne water at the the thompson thompson dam and three cars driving around in the paddocks up and down tracks and i was amazed only after 24 hours of rain that he's the least dust lifting off the road now i don't drive out the bush very often i'm not really good at it but um no i do actually it's interesting when you drive around to what is the dryness in those areas so the surface dryness is there too so really really important in that sense so from that if you take that through to say spring what springs off of tools grass is out there um grass is standing up quite high once it dries that's the fuel you know this i'm giving you the 101 or five yeah and that's a critical factor so we haven't got a grass fire season and we haven't got a bush fire season we've got both it's going to be there the the the parts of the bush will dry some of the some of the hungry bush we've got going to central victoria where it's old gold mining country it's hungry bush it will dry and dry rather quick the other factor that i watch is central victoria and anyone that understands the the cycles of weather in in australia it's already been hot in central australia it was very hot when it moved and had that impact on the blue mountains that was actually a lot of very dry air masses moving into new south wales so central victoria watch last year that was the driving factor what changed our generation so so that's there and it's sitting up again to show that it's a very very hot part of australia that will impact on us in the eastern seaboard so that's there we shouldn't scare our preparedness is good agency's working together all good aircraft is always up as an issue aircraft 41 aircraft 24 of those are helicopters the thing that runs in the media sometimes is the magical world elvis elvis is an orange helicopter that's got the name elvis written across the front funny enough we'll have another orange one in the town sitting in eastern this year just won't have elvis written on the front i'll have another name could be ted could be denis could be peter could be kim no that's a joke don't take that anyway so could be mick could be craig it won't be they've got names on them and uh we normally run two orange helicopters the two orange orange helicopters are back however the one adesinan for for those in the room it's a slightly smaller in capacity instead of 9 000 litres at 7 500 litres but it gives us a faster airspeed so we've got a quicker across quicker out quicker to move across the sky with a little bit less water but there's two of them the same so the one at beller at and one adesinan are two orange helicopters and i'm sure most people will say there goes elvis again even though elvis is not in town elvis is not coming back to australia it's actually working elsewhere um so out of that that's there and then we run two other major helicopters at colic and mansfield which are still there out of the fleet of 24 so we are in a good spot with aircraft adams the manager of the state aircraft unit adams here and we we work to make sure we have the best fleet in australia and it is it is the best fleet in australia runs in victoria we have changed a couple of things around in aircraft from those down the western districts ad would know this at castanhamilton now we we it's grassland areas and we are running what we call twin machines beside each other so instead of having one in hamilton castan we're running two in hamilton castan and that doesn't change the numbers we're moving things around and the aim for that is that we run them in pairs now we don't run them a single thing so they go out as two machines working together and we get better initial attack out of two machines so that's a bit of a change and we've done some working man gambit with south australia so out of that we are in a really good position but aircraft is one of those front and center things the media will watch and don't always give us the opportunity to explain the detail and that's you know it's very hard in a 30 second grab on the channel nine news to get the understanding of where we are but we're in a really good spot um probably two other things as i finish off and i've got a little video here that i'll i'll connect up in a moment new app new fire ready app is in testing we're into detailed testing the moment massive numbers being put through the test so it's under load testing the moment the last they're aiming to get to multiple million of hits and the ability to push out millions of hits or messages push notifications in the app and also a new website and i won't the little video will explain those both those things in a moment hopefully clearly and the other focus is about the outer metropolitan area donnie brooke fire of last year caused us a bit of grief a bit of concern in the sense that our messaging and our connection to those communities when they think about grass lands and i think this is that issue about bushfire everyone sees bush bush is the issue of victoria what happens when we when we move into the issue of grass grass is a different intensity but if you live against grassland and there is significant amount of it on you and your family and particularly the amount of smoke it generates about the decisions you make we had to change our messaging a bit about in those subdivisions you don't actually have to drive out of the subdivision if you're in there but if you move within the subdivision away from the interface area would be a better move because we had a whole heap of road traffic congestion in those suburbs that caused all sorts of problems to us including police and others so there's been a little bit different messaging around outer metro i won't go into the full detail of it but we've taken a great focus particularly in the in the municipalities that to the west and northern parts of melbourne and also very strongly connected to education about the school principles about what they'll do in february school principles to me are an absolute fundamental part of the partnership they are the trusted network they are the trusted source students parents and students trust the principle so they're a very important network for us to get information and if i was a principal and i was relying listening to 774 at three o'clock in the afternoon sorry it's not good enough for us to do that we need direct connection into these schools so they're getting timely information to make decisions about the school community and not relying on third layers of information about watching a website which is good listening to 774 as we've told everyone else to do i think that the the the principles need a little bit more information earlier than that to make good decisions about all sorts of things so so working with education they've welcomed that and this is what i mean this em responsibility is bigger than us so those in the outer metropolitan area cfa parks depi and mfb have been very strong to engage and will continue to engage but the focus will be for that area in february when the schools are back so they've done some preliminary work in this term but it'll be day one schools back it'll be a very strong campaign focused at the school principle in those areas and education will will lead that probably just in closing our our partnerships with rural regional metropolitan media is absolutely critical so Ed we welcome the opportunity and it's great to see that cfa and deputy partners with you in that our people do good things we've got great volunteers and as i said before people look around the world to see what we've got our integrated services is something we should be very proud of and we do extremely well we put a banner up this year very simple set of words we work as one there'll be examples that sometimes you'll see that parks and deputy don't get on or melbourne water and and and parks haven't got a ride or cfa and mfb haven't got a ride or cfa and xs haven't got a ride doesn't matter which one we're saying to our people in every instance it's not good enough nine out of ten but in every instance we work as one from the initial attack now our arrangements allow make us do that but sometimes we don't get it right on the ground but it's more likely to be the one percentile not not the 90 percentile but we've gone out very strong to say those simple four words we work as one at every level and it's a fundamental start and that is about that shared responsibility and shared obligation we've all got it's not just the community it's not just us it's all of us to do it together and to do it well and we will continue to do so