 Good evening, everybody. It's Michael Wooten here, Chief Executive Officer of CFA. Welcome to our live streaming event that we're holding tonight for the Gathering of Feedback in Relation to the Fire Services Review. I'm pleased to be joined tonight by Mark Sullivan, our Executive Director of Communications and Legal Services, Margaret Thomas, Acting Executive Director of People and Culture, and Deputy Chief Officer, John Haynes. Before we start to answer some questions and gather your feedback, I thought I might just make a few introductory remarks in relation to the review and how CFA intends to respond to the review and make its submission. The review, as you're probably aware, if you had a look at the terms of references, is very wide-ranging. It covers a whole range of aspects of CFA in terms of its resourcing, its operations, its management and its culture. It'll look at a range of things under those headings, but including what resources are necessary to ensure Victoria is properly equipped and fire-ready, the interoperability between our fire agencies, our management structures, culture and work practices, and how volunteers, importantly, should be supported. It'll cover our entire organisation and the things that we do. Since we've started talking to the CFA community about the review, there's been certainly a degree of feedback around the timeframes that are attached to the review, and we appreciate that they are very tight. The government clearly wants to have this review concluded before the fire season gets into full swing, and as a result of that, we need to have our submission into the review by the 31st of August, which really only gives us two weeks from yesterday to make that submission. The review is accepting written submissions from a range of stakeholders, including general members of the public, and it intends to have its final report and recommendation submitted to the Minister for Emergency Services by the 30th of September. We see the review as a really positive way for us to talk about CFA and some of the great things that we do, but we also are very open to the notion of improvement and constructive change for the organisation, because at the end of the day, for us, it's about the service we provide to the community and the way that we can improve that service is a good thing for the community and for CFA. It doesn't affect our mission, which continues to be the protection of lives and property, and we'll base our submission around some of those things. I know some people are concerned about the review and what it means for CFA, and we understand and appreciate these concerns. But we are an organisation that's already gone through considerable change. We're well versed in the area of inquiries and reviews, so we see this, as I said, as an opportunity. These reviews are going to occur from time to time. CFA is a broad-ranging organisation with a high profile in the community. It's not unexpected that from time to time people want to have a look at the organisation and talk about things that we might do better and differently. But we can adapt to change, and I think we've proven that over many years. It's unclear what the nature of the recommendations may be coming out of the review, but we'll certainly work with the review team in helping them to have as much understanding and information about CFA as possible. And one of the key things that we need to understand is the views of our members. So bearing in mind, we have a very short time frame to gather feedback and consult with our members. We're doing that this afternoon and tonight, and through a range of other forums that we're putting in place. Bearing in mind, as I said, we have to have a written submission by the end of August. But we think it's really important to get an understanding of what you think and the changes you think will be made in the context of the terms of reference of the review. We've had some really good questions and feedback come through earlier today in the session. We held this afternoon and hopefully we'll get more of that feedback tonight. So I think there's an email address and an SMS, a mobile phone number that's been provided to people who are participating. If you'd like to send in your questions and we can start to talk about some of your issues that you see as important and also just to gather your feedback so we can help formulate our submission. Okay, we're going to run through some of this. So we have got some earlier questions from this afternoon session. So perhaps if you'd like to maybe address some questions around interoperability to start with. Okay, one of the questions this afternoon was about does the review provide an opportunity to improve interoperability? Yes it does and not only that but we're already in that space at the moment. So we've worked through interoperability with our new breathing apparatus, with MFB, police and SES. We're probably going to look at, or we are looking at them at the moment for structural helmets, PPC, interoperability. And we've already started on our fire truck interoperability with MFB with pumpers especially in the first case. Our service delivery strategy especially has got a feature about heading down the track of interoperability to getting the best value for public money and to get some increased benefits in training if we have similar or the same gear. So I think yes it will. We're already down the track and I think we can only improve through the review. Good, thanks John. Another question we got earlier today was around can you assure us that the review and the union won't remove volunteers from service? And this afternoon we talked about one of the underpinning philosophies of our submission which would be around our current model of service delivery which as everyone would know is very much volunteer based supported by a number of integrated brigades. So our intention would be to demonstrate the benefits of the current service delivery model acknowledging that it can be improved but it is underpinned by a volunteer based service and where needed adjustments can be made to our service delivery to improve it. And as John mentioned the service delivery strategy goes to some of those issues in terms of climate change, population growth and decline in some areas, demographic change and a range of other external factors that we need to take consideration of as we continue to think about how we do better service delivery into the future. Okay, another question from the audience there is concern among some volunteers that this is an effort by U of U to increase its control of CFA, can you allay those fears? Yes, so we talked a little bit today in fact about the role of different stakeholders in the review and certainly U of U is a key stakeholder as is VFBV, CFA, MFB, DELP and a number of other key agencies. My sense is that we all have an equal opportunity to provide input to the review and from the discussions I've had with David O'Burn who's conducting the review he certainly has indicated that he intends to conduct that review in a very open manner starting with a clean slate. I think he will give equal voice and equal listening to each of those key stakeholders and I don't think it's about control of the organisation in any sense, I think it's very much more about service delivery, interoperability and some of the other key items raised in the terms of reference. Okay, another question today was do the CFA, MFB borders need to be realigned to improve service delivery? Personally, I don't think so. We've got a great surge capacity in our Colton Ring if you like of District 7, 14, 13 and 8 and the state relies on that surge capacity. We already provide a really good service in that area and there may be things through review that we can actually improve and modify but the alignment of a border I don't think will make a great difference to service delivery it's more about the people and their skills and what we do with them. So I think it's we provide a great service and we should be proud of it already. We've got a couple other questions how can a review happen so quickly? Yeah and I think that goes to the timeline issue that we discussed at the outset my sense is given the timelines and the need to have the recommendations concluded before the fire season the question that comes to my mind is in how much depth can the review go. So I suspect that will be relatively high level which will enable maybe some key recommendations to be made but that doesn't mean they need to be acted upon immediately. So we may well see a range of recommendations some which can be addressed in the very short term and some which may take some months past the fire season to actually be properly considered in terms of their implications and their benefit. So I think the review piece will happen in the time frames that the government's announced the implementation of any recommendations that government might choose to adopt may take some time longer. Okay further question is what does the CFA recommend for brigades and individual members when submitting their reports are there any do's and don'ts when your individual is providing? Well I don't think there are to be honest. My assessment would be if individuals are putting in submissions then they need to decide for themselves the issues that they want to raise and the matters that they want to be covered in their submissions. I don't think it's for CFA or any organisation in fact to be suggesting to people what they do or don't include in their submissions anything that's relevant to the terms of reference I think and it was in the scope of the review are matters that individuals need to assess in their own minds and put forward what they believe to be important to them as is their democratic right. Alrighty another one can you explain what the career firefighter registration board is all about and why not career and volunteer board? That's a really good question and it's one that we're trying to get a better understanding of ourselves. The notion of a firefighter registration board was raised in the lead up to last year's election. There are registration boards in place both in Victoria and across Australia for other occupations. I'm not so sure about firefighters, career or volunteer. What we're trying to do at the moment is get a better understanding of what some of those registration boards look like and what they do and what some of the benefits might be for having that sort of a mechanism in place and if we were to decide to support such an ocean I think it would be really important that we would address the issue of equity both for volunteers and career firefighters in the context of anything we do in our submission. Okay and one from this afternoon we haven't covered yet is will the submissions to the review be publicly available and will CFA's submission be available to members? Yeah so that was a specific issue raised when I met with David O'Burn last week and it's very clear that the intention is that all submissions made to the review will be made public unless the author of that submission specifically requests otherwise. So I would expect that CFA's submission would be made a public document once the review has received it and therefore yes it will be available to all our members. Alrighty and final one from this afternoon. What level of influence does CFA have compared to U of U on the review? Yeah I think we sort of I touched on that a little bit before. I think you know from my sense we have equal levels of influence and government is prepared to listen to the views of a whole variety of stakeholders and the review I'm sure will take a similar approach and then I think try and distill what they believe as beneficial recommendations out of those submissions. So I think our influence is no less or no more than any other stakeholder that's involved in the review. Another one online, it's probably mine I reckon too is it time for CFA to consider other models of service delivery staff only stations retain models before they are forced upon the organisation. Ansage yes we already look at different models and different ways we can improve service delivery and especially with you know exponential growth in some areas, decline in others our model of fire station firefighter and fire truck is under challenge in different places. So we do look at different models, we weigh up the pros and cons of different models and how we implement or not implement is really part of a consultation with a wider view about whether we pilot some of this stuff in the future or not and part of the service delivery strategy is about accelerating innovation looking at different ways of providing service and really we have to look at different ways because our model is not sustainable in some parts of the world right now. So we've already started to use helicopters for instance for the last few years in Sea Lake through the harvest period mainly because our key firefighters are on grain trucks and earning a living gathering the harvest in and we're looking to extend aircraft in some areas provided for that high risk environment. So we're already doing some stuff, already looking at different models are they good, better, ugly, will they work in all places no but we're already in that space. No more at this stage. Okay. I'm coming. It must be a long one. So if people are still listening we would strongly encourage you to if you've got any questions or issues you wish to raise with us please send them in and we can address them now. The SES isn't specifically mentioned or referred to it seems to be very much aimed at the fire agencies specifically CFA and MFB and it mentions public land in one of the sub points of the terms of reference so that goes to obviously the Department of Environment Leaning, Water and Planning. So my understanding at the moment is no, the SES don't seem to be covered in the strict terms of reference that have been issued it's very much focused on fire. They're all quiet on the online at this moment. So the question was do we need career firefighters to provide better service in out of metropolitan Melbourne that we CFA looks after? Yeah we do in parts and we do have a lot of service delivery standards and we work with volunteer fire brigades to improve their service delivery. One of the treatments for service delivery is increasing our integrated fire brigades which we have done over the last 10 years especially. So what we're trying to do is to have a mixture of service delivery and what we're trying to do is to have a mixture of integrated and volunteer brigades in a space where integrated brigades can support volunteer brigades around them. So we're constantly reviewing service delivery standards and the ability of fire brigades to respond in a timely manner and as we do that we know what other options are for the future. Is it a blanket approach required? No. Is it targeted as per support to volunteer brigades? Yes it is and that's been our model for many years. The next one is will this review hasten or slow up the restructure and see if our restructure even more that's even possible. That's a good question. So one of the things that we decided to take a firm approach on early after the review was announced was continue to implement initiatives across CFA that didn't directly conflict with the terms of reference of the review and that we thought were necessary to continue to provide better services to the communities of Victoria. We think the structural changes in fire and emergency management operational training and volunteerism and the second phase of financial services are part of that landscape. The review talks about looking at management structures. My interpretation of that is that that would be limited to more senior levels of the organisation and I don't have a sense that it would affect the proposals that we're currently consulting on in relation to structural change so we've made a decision to continue to proceed with consultation and implementation of those structural changes and the review will continue along its lines looking at management structures so I see them as related but not mutually exclusive. Okay another one online. Will CFA raise issue of restrictive industrial agreements that do not permit the CFA management to manage the organisation through the review? Yeah I'm not sure that our submission will be focused on our industrial arrangements. If we believe there are ways to improve the organisation with a focus on delivery of services to the community then certainly we would raise those things but I'm not sure that they would go directly to limiting the reasons to industrial agreements. I think there are a range of opportunities to improve our services and we would cover those in our submission. This is two questions. As the CFA works with the MFB more will there be more look at introducing MFB radios into CFA trucks not only for neighbouring brigades but second brigades as they often call to support MFB. So as most know I think we've got two different radio systems MFB and CFA or three regional digital. So in the past we've had radios in the surrounding brigades and also some hand held portables. I think this is a question for long term interoperability into where we go as far as radio networks for fire services and probably be a good discussion point in a review about saying what's our future for our communications that connect us better not only fire services but also an emergency services sector as well. So I think it would be a good discussion point more than our solution at this point. And the second question is in terms of infrastructure needed for new permanent firefighters what budget will pay for it? So we're obviously in a process with government in relation to an additional 350 career firefighters which was a government commitment upon their election and we're working very closely with government to help them deliver that commitment and we expect that as we implement that program it needs to be funded by government for us to complete the deliverables including the firefighters and any infrastructure needs that might arise from the additional 350 over the next three to four years. This one's about consultation and how will CFA ensure its legislative requirements to consult with volunteers prior to any changes being made affecting them to be done when the U of U is attempting to dictate these changes at the current EBA negotiations without volunteer involvement. So in summary how does CFA do its legislative requirements for consultation with EBA negotiations going on? Well we'll do them the best we possibly can in the constraints of the timelines. We have commitments to consult with both volunteer fire brigades Victoria and as many volunteers as we can get to and this is obviously one example of trying to reach out and consult with people in relation to any change that affects volunteers arising out of enterprise agreement negotiations both the executive leadership team and the CFA board very clearly understand their obligations around consultation with volunteers and we'll ensure that we'll consult with volunteers before any enterprise agreement documents are concluded. We're getting numerous ones in there. Next one will CFA review its service delivery standards to reflect skills mixed rather than strictly a time based measure. The issue with that is that our time based measure is allocated to Hazard Class which is signed off by the board in the 1990s. As part of our strategy and our performance measurement are still measuring time but we're going to actually have a focus on performance outcome. So it's not only do you get there in a certain time but it's what do you do before, during and after an emergency and we've been working with the Monash Injury Research Institute to help us with actually working on what best things we need to do to spend our dollars on before, during and after to get better outcome in performance. So yes we'll still measure time and we'll have to publicise our service delivery times probably in the next 12 months at the same time we're actually looking at how better we can improve our performance in public safety to the community and with the community. So it's a bit of a mixed bag yes time will stay but we're also looking at how we better provide the service. Next one will CFA look at the over servicing in particular areas it's probably me still look I think we need to the best way we can provide services to the community and with the community some places are probably a little bit under done in service some may a little bit be over servicing but in that we do more than just structure and bushfires and some of the fibre brigades have actually specialised in different areas which provide a service beyond their fibre gate so you may look at some places which may be over serviced but in that we've got specialist vehicles that actually provide a wider footprint either in their group, their district or the state so it's a constant thing we look at our performance and whether we can improve so we'll continue to do that. Next question is for CFA is this the first time this sort of review has happened to this scale it's the first time CFA has been involved in a review of this nature and I say that with confidence because it's been conducted under a piece of legislation called the enquiries act 2014 which is a very new piece of legislation and actually came out of a recommendation from the bushfires royal commission in terms of the construct under which enquiries might be conducted so I think there's only ever been one other review of this nature under that legislation in Victoria and that's ongoing at the moment the fire service one is the second so I think in summary CFA has been involved in a whole range of enquiries reviews, royal commissions and other processes but yes this is the first time this specific type of review has been used for not only CFA but the fire service is more generally. Next question is with the August 31st timeframe will this suggest impacts and changes to the coming fire season and potentially how do you want me to start off with that? You can if you want to Well I'm not too sure but the issue is that we're already in preparation for this next fire season we're already doing our service delivery preparedness programmes as we speak and people have been in the field for the last couple of weeks ensuring that we're ready and ready to go depends on you know I think you know how wide ranging outcomes would be but no matter what happens I think we're still, Victoria have to provide a service which we're ready to do so I think it would be minimal if any. Yeah I agree I think if there are particular recommendations that can be implemented very quickly and don't disrupt our preparations for the fire season then they might be adopted but anything else I think would be held over pending the fire season concluding Next question is a plan still to have a people and volunteerism directorate and if so how can it be the two existing directorates of building their structures in isolation? So Magnus might want to talk about the building process but in terms of the initial part of the question is it still intended to have that directorate? Absolutely it is and I don't think they are being built in isolation. No I can't comment on that. We started the process of implementing these structures a couple of months ago and some of the structures and different directors have went ahead including the people and culture one and the design that has been underway with the OTMV or leadership and learning structure has been done having in mind the services and the team and the processes of the current people and culture structure and have of course in mind that those two directors will come together but it's not only the alignment between the people and culture and the current OTMV structures that were considered but also how the OTMV and new structure is aligned with foreign emergency and other support areas so the integration despite the phasing process we're trying to work very close together in this last couple weeks the teams have been meeting with different members of those directors to make sure that the alignment is there. Next one is about STS STS service delivery standard is applied and measured definitely across the state how do we get consistency? We're currently doing an audit of hazard identification that has a class 2, 3 and 4 and out of that we're ensuring that STS is right for which has a class so for a volunteer fire brigade has a class 2 for instance 4 minutes turn out 4 minutes travel time which is part of our planning our service delivery planning as well and for an integrated brigade for class 2 hazard 90 seconds turn out in the 6.5 minutes travel time so we've found some consistency through this we're fixing that up now and in preparation for when we have to actually publicise our service delivery compliance in the next 6 to 12 months Next one is about can you please answer the question regarding the budget for the 300 staff firefighters and what impact will it have on the volunteer budget so this will be about the 350 career firefighters government's commitment I don't expect it'll have any impact on the volunteer budget per say we as I said earlier in a process working with government to cost out the impact on the budget of the 350 firefighters and there are a number of different options about how that might be implemented each of those options has a different cost attached to it and we're in discussions in the last day or two in fact with government about what those options look like and what they may cost we are making it clear that those options all require additional budget and can't be absorbed within CFA's existing budget Another one for me pretty much, well CFA kept the traditional assignment tables or would they look to taking on the MFB idea of closest truck as a spats to a job Currently we run assignment tables through Ester which is tables for risk there is an option in the future some time to go to radial search but in that we really have to have some idea of our automatic vehicle location so we can radially search them that way So in the short term no there's no view of my mind to change traditional assignment tables in the short term is this a potential for the future 100% Next question, will the outcome of this review decide if we get a new chief once you and Ferguson leaves The short answer to that question is no has already commenced a recruitment process to appoint a new chief officer and that process is continuing and is not affected in any way by the review so it will proceed and the review will do its work but the two are separate pieces of work Is there a budget for this review and ongoing funding for any outcomes So I'll interpret the question as has CFA got a budget for the review and the short answer is the cost to CFA of pulling together a submission and participating in the review is quite small and in fact will just need to be absorbed into our existing budgetary arrangements What was the second part of the question John? Undergoing funding for any outcomes, well that's a question I think that remains to be answered depending on the recommendations and more importantly depending on the minister and the government's appetite for adopting the recommendations that may or may not lead to budgetary requirements we would deal with those when we know what the government's response to the review is Okay, next one's about as far as MFB and CFA boundaries, how far out with the urban response area be about the CFA taking on an RFS structure for rule brigades on the board of urban rule areas as this seems to be what members are hearing. So first question about how far out would a boundary be not too sure how long the piece of string the only area that has got any other boundary on it is a metacolton area which is a long term planning overview which is a long way out from MFB boundary. The RFS structure, the RFS in the same town can have two fibregates so you can have a town like Tocomol for instance on the border of Victoria you can have RFS fire truck or trucks in the shed and two kilometres down the road you can have a New South Wales fire rescue pumper in the shed is that efficient in the long term and double handling and double commitment of officers etc that's how fire rescue and RFS operate in New South Wales this one's about along the lines of all turned service delivery can you discuss the idea of peak response trucks from hub integrated stations to support volunteer stations as required rather than integrating. Now I understand that to be whether it's hub integrated stations or hub career only stations and peak response is something that the ambulance service do where they put their resources at the times of day when they're most going to have their peak response so for instance if it's between 2 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the afternoon as their peak response they put the bulk of resources around that time frame and lean at the other resources resources other times. At the moment with the 10-14 fire station model our resources are there all the time so if we have to go down to an ambulance type peak response model then we actually have to change our whole shift arrangements and our EBA arrangements in that as well and the idea of hub integrated stations is about sometimes we've got some issues with day manning in certain areas a centrally located integrated brigade could actually support volunteer brigades in those times when they're struggling a little bit with their numbers and still provide a good community service within our service delivery parameters so if that's what's meaning by the question that's something we're actually really doing at Ocean Grove at the moment where Ocean Grove integrated brigade go out to the Ballerin Peninsula to support local brigades at the moment so that's already in place at one location Question is the announcement of the new chief officer tied in with this review timing and if so how it's similar to the question we were asked before no it's not the new chief officer process is underway when the board have found the best candidate for the role they would appoint somebody regardless of the stage that the review might be at. Okay all quiet online at the moment so maybe give people who are online another couple of minutes if they've got any final questions that they might want to submit through it or any feedback that we can take on board it doesn't just have to be questions. Okay I think on that basis we might draw things to a close. Can I just on behalf of John Margaret and Mark thank everybody for participating tonight. Can I particularly thank people who took the time and made the effort to submit some really good questions to us that really helps us understand what the issues are for you so that's the main purpose of this session but it's by no means the only opportunity that you will have to provide your input to the review. There is an email address review feedback at cfa.vic.gov.au which you can use as we lead up to the end of August and we submit our written submission so I would encourage you if you still have input that you'd like to make then that's an opportunity for it so once we've made our submission and all the submissions are made public then people will be able to review CFA's and remember you also have an opportunity to make a direct submission to the review as an individual if you so desire. So on that basis we say thank you and we'll close the session. Good night.