 Welcome back. Is there anyone up the back there looking for a seat and they can't find one? Put your hand up if you've got a spare seat next to you. I think they're just lurking at it. Come on everyone, give them a friend. Okay, so we've seen on the screens just before there was a time-lapse setup of everything that's happened sort of yesterday. So a big thanks to Diane Lawson for putting that together. I can put your hands together. She's up the back. She's signing. There she is up the back. Everybody, welcome to day two of what's going to be another amazing day. There's a couple of you that have joined us for the first time today. So welcome to you and if you don't know us, I'm April and this is Jackie and we're going to be your host for today and let's hope that it's another inspired field morning. And you know what it's pretty early. I've been up since the crack of dawn and I reckon we need a little bit of energizing to happen. I'm not going to tell you a joke, but I am going to bring out my fairy friends over here. Captain Kuala and Patty, a little bit of music if we could please Mr. Music Man. And how about we give these guys a bit of a clap. Come on. It's very low-key music. We needed a little bit of pumping action. You know what, there's some good wiggly. Let's give them a bit of, you know what guys, stand back here you big woofer. How's these crazy critters? You know what guys, these are our mascots and these are another engagement tool. So remember these are your resources. You can hire them for free from your regional offices. Make sure you guys make the most of these. Use creativity to engage. And I reckon that this just shows the testament. Who feels like we've joined forces this weekend? Who feels like we've got something out of each other? Yeah! You two should give each other a high five. Yeah, give each other a high five. Yeah! I think we should say goodbye now. Say thank you to CK and Patty. Come on. You know what, for the next 55 minutes we've designated a whole bit of time for a Q&A. Get off your scallywags. You're distracting everyone. Go on. So we've got our Q&A this morning. We've got a fabulous panel that's joining us up the front. Oh my gosh, we're just going to wait a moment. Anyone can get in that suit. Anyone. Anybody can do it. So we're going to have a wonderful panel this morning. So from here to field your questions from the CFA, so I'll get them to come up as we sort of scroll them out. We've got the Chief from CFA here today. Please welcome Chief Officer Ewan Ferguson. Also Executive Manager of Community Capability, Andrew Andreo. Community Development, Gwen Brennan. Well, Gwen makes her way up the front. We've also got a panel from the SES. So please welcome the CEO of the SES, Stephen Griffin. We'd also like to welcome the Director of Emergency Management Planning and Communications Ben McFadgen. And we'd also welcome the Manager of Emergency Management Planning, Kate White. Alright, so clearly we won't be able to get to all 500 of you in the next 55 minutes. There is a live SMS board being set up behind this behind you in front of you. And so you can keep your text messages very short and relevant if they go on over 160 characters. Apparently the machine doesn't like it. Computer says no. So try and keep it relevant as well. So there's going to be a couple of roaming microphones. So if you've got a question make sure you pick up your hand and grab a roaming microphone person, which is Gabby standing at the back and Tracy over here. Make sure your text messages and questions are relevant. We're here to get answers to vent. So we've convented another occasion. This is a good time to get answers that are relevant to community safety. Alright, so what do you reckon? You and I, Stephen, do you have anything you'd like to say first before we kick off? Don't have to share your microphones. Look, I might just stand up because I've got the lectern in the way over here just so that I can be seen. But I guess a couple of starting up comments. The first is it is absolutely fantastic to have SES as our partners in what started off as a CFA Community Engagement Forum, I think five years ago. I remember tracking over to Masseter in early one morning. And to see this evolve as a joint agency activity, I think speaks volumes about where the sector is going, but also speaks volumes for this craft of community engagement and community safety within our communities. I'd like to at the outset just thank all of you and your brigades and units for what you do. The work you do has very real outcomes. We measure and we see reported people who lose their lives in fires and other emergencies. We see damaged bills. But what we don't see, probably what we don't report properly enough is a reduction in these incidents as a result of your good work. So I was just saying to a group this morning that often when I'm driving around I'll be listening to the CFA radio and Vic Fire will come on. There'll be a brigade turned out to maybe a kitchen fire. And a lot of the time, a lot of the time the caller will say and we're assembled at the letterbox. And that's a real credit because that's saying that community safety works. On the 9th of February 2014, a significant anniversary of Black Saturday, it was a really, really nasty day. I think we had some areas of the state which were in catastrophic fire danger. And I just want to highlight another real example of how this function is working. There was a fire in the South Warrandyte area. I think it burned three houses and there was another house seriously damaged under some of the most severe conditions that we'd had since Black Saturday. And the fire was put out. But when I sort of had the review of that particular fire it was certainly a success on the day because we had fire and emergency services working together. We had MFB they would have been deputy at the time and CFA working together. We had integrated aircraft response so we'd learn to hold all those things from Black Saturday. But the really, really significant thing was that the community reacted in the right way. The community were there defending their house in the right way. The community had learned a whole lot of lessons from where they had been in the previous four or five years. And in that same community we've seen the community has actually taken control of the bushfire messaging from CFA. And there was a YouTube video that showed the community and it was the voice of the community who was inspiring other members of the community to be fire safe. I just think that was just such a great example of under a severe day the community engagement, the community safety, the fire prevention working and all the agencies working together. So I just think how good is that? I'm going to stop at a moment but I just also want to make a comment that for CFA and I know within the sector we are going down the path of increasing the inclusiveness of the diversity of our organisations. And it's a pleasure as I look out in front of us now to see the number of women and men who are on this journey. And the little steering group from CFA who I had breakfast with this morning. It wasn't constructed this way but half of them were men and half of them were women. And we need to continue to go down the path of diversity of SES and CFA and all of the emergency services. Increasing the diversity means that we will be a better reflection of the community. We will be able to engage more effectively and with greater confidence with the community and they will have greater confidence in us. And I know one of the discussions around the table is how do we get into some of these communities, particularly communities who are refugees, who perceive emergency services and people who wear uniforms and drive flash cars and so on. They perceive us in a different way. So I challenge you when you go back to your brigades and your communities to continue to seek out new members to continue to value the diversity and gender in race, sexuality, skin colour, religion. It might be quite challenging to our current memberships but it's through that diversity that we will become stronger, better and more connected with the community. You do a great job. Thank you very much. Thanks Ewan. I'm owning you to emergency services. I've been with the organisers for just over 12 months. But where I was last night when we were celebrating our 40th anniversary of the SES unit in Rochester, you start to get a bit of a feel for the history and the culture of emergency organisations but also volunteerism. And when I drove over this morning and seeing the numbers of people and obviously the vehicles that get you here you can't be more than proud of the volunteerism and the strength and unity that's in this room. Coming into it new, I saw the emergency management Victoria trying to drive at our level, the new ones level and my level and right across the organisation, that unity and trying to tap into what is a great resource that we have across Victoria. But when you sit practically in the room here and the work that's being done that's where the strength will be for the future. Last night we were talking about what the future brings for the SES in that particular case but imagine what it's going to be like in the next five to ten years. Where you can see what it's going to be like it's going to be actually harnessing the great skill, the talent right across emergency services and not that silo effect which historically has been the way we've been brought up. We've done those particular things in our silos but imagine the energy and the passion that if you put that energy together what you can achieve. So this weekend I want to thank very much the CFA and the SES and the staff and the volunteers that have been involved in organising this. You can see the future is very bright and you can see that if we work together the community of Victoria is in safe hands. So I commend you for your time, your effort and I think this weekend has obviously been something that we can grow into the future. Thank you very much. Right we're going to start, so start your text messages start your hands raised if you've got something that you're burning to start a question with over here, start her off. If you'd like to direct the question to a certain panellist please do otherwise just ask and I'm sure someone will pick it up. Okay, this is a question from the SES team yesterday one of the breakout sessions we heard of the success of the cadet program in New South Wales. Can you see a situation in Victoria where the cadet program is embraceable strongly and driven harder by the organisation? I think I can have a go at that one. I went to a meeting up in New South Wales a few months ago where they sort of did brief us on the program up there and what I found quite interesting was that the New South Wales cadet program wasn't so much about getting kids into a volunteer role and part of the SES was more about sort of educating them about how to prepare for an emergency, what to do when one hits and it's sort of more in that readiness space which, and that's quite a different approach to a cadet ship and the one thing that they sort of were saying okay well that was phase one we're going to start moving into phase two, we're going to look at that recruitment side and it did make me wonder is that something that we can sort of move into I think at the moment and Steve can I guess verify this we want to get our organisation positioned for the future at the moment and then we can look at it sort of later on but at the moment we're sort of more focusing on our current cadre of volunteers and ensuring that we've got the people in place to work in readiness and we're in a response so there's certainly something that's on the cards but not immediately doing that Steve? Yeah I think that we're very open to, we're doing a service review as you know so I think that we're open to all suggestions and I think it's a way you tap into the suggestions that are made around cadets but it's also around making sure that it actually works for our units or our volunteers because I found as if you start to impose those things across the organisation it doesn't work in every case, we're finding that our service has to be tailored for obviously certain communities, it's not one size fits all which is coming out more and more and I'm sure that on that style of cadets thought that it will be tailored and work in certain communities and others might take it up but we're certainly open to the suggestion and then we've just got to make sure that it has been so it doesn't divert us from actually some of the immediate things that we need to do but the question is I suppose how do we tap into new people, youth and diverse communities across Victoria to be part of our SES? Just in adding to that there was a great Sarah Ford from the NALA SES unit presented a really great pilot of a project that she's been doing around kids so it's something very much that we'll be taking, they're kind of getting a briefing from Sarah on that and that might be the way to how do we actually engage children and get their interest in actually joining as a volunteer in the future. I've got a question down the back there Our SES unit has got a cadet program through the local school and we often get one or two cadets out of the end of the VCE year 12 join the unit. I think that's obviously an example where certain communities and it'll work quite well and people drive those sorts of things and we need to support that and others will be going into other spaces so I commend you for the great work that you're doing there. I'm Tony Reid from Conway, sorry about bending your ear last night Ewan but we still want to try. My question is it's with integration. On the fire ground there's many tasks that the SES would be able to undertake, drafting, that sort of thing truck filling. Is there going to be a recommendation come out of training requirements for that to take place and what recognition would have to be put on to maybe the SES uniform or CFA logo to say that they've done min skills and can assist on the fire ground and is there going to be some sort of formal package come out of how we can at brigade level integrate with SES, in my case I've got Invalok and Wontagie and do training together and develop what assistance they can be actually on the fire ground. Thanks Tony and it was Conway for a new heavy tanker. Look, I guess higher level guidance and we've got senior people from the organisations here, I know Craig was here yesterday, John Haines was here yesterday, Steve Warrington is going to be here later on today and our guidance to you is through the words work as one. So those are some words that came up a couple of years ago. Sorry Tony, I'm still trying to answer your question. I'll just ignore that for a moment. What I do want to reinforce is that the majority of the good things that have occurred, the step changes in organisations like SES and CFA have arisen because they're done at the local level first. So with that high level guidance we work as one is your licence if you're in the SES unit and you think you can help CFA or you're in CFA you can think that SES can be of some assistance or it might even be CFA helping life saving Victoria or Red Cross. The example that we're trying to demonstrate with the agencies being on the stage together today as you see the agencies on the stage together when there are emergencies and all those meetings beforehand that it's okay to work together and to go beyond the traditional role because whilst we have our agency mission statements, actually we're here for two things. We're here to serve the community and we're here to do good things and bad things happen to the community. So there's the mission statement and I would say if you think there are a couple of SES units that Comac Brigade or your group of brigades can convene a discussion and come up with an arrangement then that's great. Now the second part of the question is are we going to provide some guidance in how we do that? Can I take that on board? Yeah, we can provide some principles and maybe we need to have a meeting with Steven and his executive team to see how we might better define how CFA units, CFA brigades and SES units work more closer together but it's great that you recognise the need to do it and I would say don't feel constrained just go out and do it and then tell us how successful it is and bring it back to a forum like this Tony. Heavy tanker Conway. I have a question for you and I think Ian Shelton, Eagle Hawk Brigade and Eagle Hawk of course is on the northern fringe of Bendigo and it's got a I guess an at-risk community urban forest interface. So how important do you see it's a question about paths. The property advice visit services are traditionally engaging at-risk residents in those rural urban interfaces and what can we do to reassure our brigades that the knowledge base of our volunteers will be good enough for the task? A great question and I guess when we talk about the prediction of the community there are a range of things we do and I know in that Eagle Hawk area one of the key partners there for your bushfire risk is DELP and Parks Victoria and I know that because I have regular discussions and see the work on the ground, plan burning is a really important part of the response to bushfire there and if I can sort of launch that off, in the last two years there has been a commitment by the government of the day to fund the development of greater understanding about plan burning and involved burning. So that's I suppose one thing. In regards to the property advice service, we've probably come through a bit of a we've had some experiences and we had that initially where we had largely paid staff would go along, people would bring up and it was a very, very expensive service and I know I'm going to get a question about budget later on but I just want to reinforce that as an example where we were very conscious of how much that paid service was costing but we had to balance that against the fact that in a lot of cases the property advice visiting service was able to target the highest risk properties. So part of the evolution of this program in CFA has been to say well actually our volunteers are in many cases just as well equipped and just as experienced and we can give them that bridging training so that volunteers can knock on the doors and it's a you know we're very fortunate, we're one of the few organisations that can develop that relationship with our community by knocking on their door. So I guess the first thing I want to say here is that knocking on doors, the property visiting and advice service is absolutely a great program what we need to do is make sure that it is resourced not only effectively but it's sufficiently resourced and we think the best way of doing that is making sure that volunteers, local people are trained to do it. Now there will be some brigades who will say but we don't have members who can do that work. Our response to that is go out and recruit them because they are in the community and I know as I look around the room here there are people who whose primary role is around community engagement and community education not in responding. I think that's one of the really important messages we need to send about CFA is we're not just about red trucks in responding, we do that when we've had an organisational failure at an incident. We actually see it has been really important to prevent, prepare but that critical role with the community knocking on the door, walking into someone else's property or walking around that property, providing them with the advice is just one of the linchpins. Now the other comment I'd make is that through the help me Andrew, the risk mapping that we do the hazard mapping process, we now have mapped on townships all around Victoria where our highest risk properties are. So what we're saying in terms of value for money is rather than just door knocking the whole of Eaglehawk, let's look at what our risk mapping is doing and let's target our efforts in those areas which are first of all at greatest risk, secondly most vulnerable. So our decision making on where we target our activities will be based on risk and it will be based on vulnerability. I hope that somehow answers your question. I just wanted to add something, yesterday I ran a little session on a disaster and disadvantage and the recent dropping off the edge report from the Jesuit social services Eaglehawks listed as one of the most disadvantaged communities in the state and so we're also looking at the situation where people that have an interaction with us are unable to do the preparedness or the maintenance of their properties and things like that that are required to reduce their risk and we're looking at the partnering with other community sector organisations, caregivers and those about how they can support those people to plan to leave effectively efficiently on high risk days and so on because we may come across people through our PAVS program that we are concerned about and we need to have some sort of referral networks in place to ensure that they get some follow up support with their consent of course and being conscious of privacy issues but so this whole area of working with people who are experiencing disadvantage and may have special needs or a whole range of things is another area that we're tackling at the moment and that's just going to sort of complement those mainstream programs. Thank you. And I'm just going to jump in here because there's a fellow called Chris Eccles who's the Secretary of the Department of Primary Cabinet and one of Chris's broader themes is about co-production. So an example of co-production is rubbish removal. So it used to be you put everything into a rubbish bin and put it out on the nature strip or the service would come along and collect it. Now what happens under this co-production theme we as householders separate out our vegetable waste from our recyclables from our real rubbish. So that's an example where we do that, we're not paid to do it but it's in our interest to do it and then it's a much more efficient way of dealing with rubbish. That's an example of co-production. So wind has just highlighted and we're seeing today with co-production between SES and CFA. But when we go into a property and we notice something wrong we need to be connected up with the council welfare people with the Department of Health and Human Services and with all those other agencies. So that increasingly our role in the community is one not only at providing advice if it's SES about maybe flood and storm or CFA it might be around fire but it might be also saying that we'll provide some advice but we've noticed something else is wrong and we want to put you in contact with someone else who can help you because as Gwynn said a lot of the time those vulnerable people aren't empowered to us to help themselves. So again we need to think of our role our emerging role in developing the capability of the community as being connecting up all these co- organisations who share this responsibility in our community. Thank you. So we'll just go to some of our text questions now. They're flying in thick and fast. I think Andrew you've got a couple you've been keeping note of. Thank you. Look if I can just answer a couple of questions not in any particular order but emergency management planning Ewan the Chief spoke about the agencies working collaboratively we're working with SES and MFB and we've got some joint badge emergency management planning tools you might say. The MFB on behalf of the sector of developing online emergency management manual and caravan parts big SES have taken the lead in relation to that. So instead of the bad old days or whatever you want to call them we're CFA had its and the MFB had its and SES and so on and so forth. We're looking at efficiencies so just to answer that one there was a question about what's the pledge and Jamie will correct me if I'm wrong but you know the pledge is an opportunity for us to work with our community so the community so we can increase the community's understanding of fire risk and no so that but also the community can pledge a fire safety activity for instance check its smoke alarm or manages vegetation or develop a plan or whatever but also can nominate a brigade and it's a bit of a competition because what the team's trying to work on with our region and district folk is looking at different ways of engaging with the community and I know some people have said to us the pledge that's too Americanised people will you know think pledge that actually means something rather than an O for whatever it might be. And then last but not least those maps there was a question about when will those maps be made available or something like that. We're working with our regions and our districts to say that you know we're putting we're putting those maps on brigades online and we're asking our regions and districts to talk with their brigades on how to best grab that information and utilise that information so thanks. And Ben did you have something you want to say about them? I just wanted to sort of a few questions that have come up so the first one about planning which we've got to be talking about but EMB have been doing a lot of really good work over the last year and sort of developing a coordinated, solid approach to planning within the state and it's the same with sort of the community with something that's framed as well so both Luccio and Joe Buffoni, whoops, Sunday morning have been doing, you know, they're leading this project for the moment so we've been engaging with them at the state level and then we're going to start working down for a regional and municipal and down to sort of a community level but we need to get a really coherent approach to it because we're able to sort of go off with our own sort of siloed approach. All it ends up doing is confusing people. I guess the other thing I wanted to refer to as well is going into schools and you know, there's no argument that kids are a really, really good way to get messaging out to a community and that sort of preparedness sort of stuff that are perfectly little ambassadors to do it but if we will sort of go in and so you know, the police go in with their ones and we go in with ours and CFA go in with theirs and me and Bea go in with theirs, they just aren't going to have time to teach the kids how to read and write because that's a lot of work. So we need to have a really, really coordinated approach to doing it and I think that's something that possibly EMB could start sort of working on so we can get this really, really strong coordinated approach to going into schools and do it as you know, we're working as one rather than the sort of siloed approach because the messages that we are trying to get out to communities are essentially the same as you know, it's that sort of getting ready so you know, how to prepare for an emergency and then what to do and I guess one of the other things and I saw the one about triple zero versus one, three, two, five hundred and I've always been quite interested being as you can tell I'm not from around here but the whole concept of fire and other emergencies and it's like well hang on we refer to fire as an emergency and then we refer to, you know, SES does flood storm earthquake tsunami and those are emergencies as well as it's all one thing we should be talking about and emergency regardless of what it is so that's why it's interesting probably when, if you want to jump in because this is your baby as well so CFA and SES put some money in through the National Disaster Resilient Grants scheme and just about to embark on a project around putting the team messages within the curriculum and getting teachers to actually deliver it through the schools which is a really good way to get through to the kids. Would you want to say some more on that? Yeah, it's aimed at sort of the safety of the students presently as they are as students but also this notion of generational change and we're creating the next generation that is more risk aware has a range of resilience, resiliency that will carry them forward so we don't have to, the people coming up behind us don't have to beat their heads quite as hard against the brick wall as we do to get people to accept the risk and do something about the risk so it's sort of multifaceted so we're working to produce fantastic resources for the teachers to use and provide professional learning for the teachers to give them the confidence to deliver it and our aim is that every young person in the State of Victoria will participate in disaster resilience education at some point in their lives so big aspirational goals but I reckon we'll get there. We've heard a lot about short term risks I was just wondering when the SES and CFA are going to put out a definitive statement on the science of climate change it's got to be the greatest long term risk and short term risk that we're facing I'm glad you brought that up the 14th of July we had a forum that was collaboration with the emergency management of Victoria and the emergency services where we put climate change on the agenda and we worked with leaders from the organisations and a number of people up here attending that day and we looked at developing some principles for the sector to consider as well as short, medium and long term actions it's still in its formative phase so you're absolutely right it's something that we need to grapple with and I know Craig in his strategic action plan I think that's what the S stands for he's put the teaser in there to say we need to start thinking about the future and climate change because one part is the emergency events but we've got to start the journey sometime and I suppose at least we've started it but part of it is the emergency events but also part of it is the sustainability of our communities and we have a lot of people that work on the land so what does it mean for Victoria's food bowl but also emergency events in the future so yes I think we've been a bit slow but we've started our journey now Thanks my name is Tim McNeely from the Golden Square Brigade just recently we've had to I guess is the right term to elect a community safety officer in our brigade which we traditionally didn't have and traditionally we've always left the community safety role up to our regional community safety team so that it was a consistent message coming from the state where we think we've got our finger on the pulse with community engagement but we're struggling to really define what the community safety officer's role is the position description that comes with it is hugely broad and a lot of it's not relevant to us so we're really after some guidance about what's the expectation of this person in our brigade are they expected to be taking on some of the role of the regional community safety team or is it more just about community engagement but it's termed community safety. Hi very good question there part of it is local needs for addressing local needs with local solutions we wanted it to be broad so that you can choose what's most appropriate in your situation we have brigades that are taking baby steps and brigades that are cable of running the Olympic 100 metres so we've got brigades across the whole gamut so rather than being prescriptive and alienating a whole load of people but we thought it would be a bit more performance based as such and enabling the partnership between our districts and the brigades to say in your situation your community needs your level of development this is what we recommend that you do there's no right or wrong. We don't do community engagement well if you talk to your neighbour you're doing community engagement and then you've got other brigades that might do fire safe kids and so on and so forth so rather than being prescriptive and again we welcome your feedback if you want more guidance and more prescription because I know in our organisation SOPs and so we like that sort of stuff so if we want a bit more prescription then the message will be fed up and then we'll work fed up I don't mean fed up but fed up and we'll work with our regions and our districts and help provide guidance. Does that answer your question? Tim I might just say 5 years ago there were 40 brigades represented this forum I think we got 205 brigades so in 5 years we've actually multiplied by 5 number of brigades. The introduction of a role of community safety officer at brigade level is a way of CFA corporately saying traditionally we've had a captain of tenants and apparatus and all that sort of stuff of saying this is a really important role and we want every brigade to consider putting someone into that role that's how important we see it but it is a bit of an evolution and it's really good feedback and perhaps we do need to give a bit more guidance particularly when you're in an environment like golden square. Thank you. Kate do you have anything you'd like to say about the KEF role similar to expect a similar kind of story for us? Thanks Jackie. So SES now has a competency based course ability so the community education facilitator course is a PUA we currently have 100 and many of you in the room today around that but it's really giving a really good grounding for you to actually go out and have the tools and the sources of building capacity and capability and actually engaging with the communities and on the back of that we're actually then building what from pick off the shelf or tools for your toolbox some really useful resources for you to go out and actually engage with the community so it's about what's the carrot against what's the best thing for your buck and actually going through that but it's really exciting for us at the moment to build this side of the agency and very working closely with CFA in making sure that we don't want to be going in on a Monday to a community and talking about fire and then turning up on a Tuesday and talking about flood and then on Wednesday going in and talking about something completely different again. So there's a whole range of behaviour change that's coming in and it's a phased approach about how we do that until we can get more mature in the way that we conduct this business but really exciting for us. I'll take one on the floor Gabby. Yes, hi Dave Botherway from Writerless ECS. You mentioned before there were some joint publications being prepared with ECS, CFA and MFP. Whatever it appears to me should be a lot better integration particularly for us metro units with the MFP particularly now they've got heavy rescue functionality. Could you like to update us on any further integration that's happening with MFP because otherwise they appear to be left out of this particular loop. So we are doing some projects under the auspice of emergency management Victoria so the community based emergency management project so that's been running for the past 12 months. We looked at going into what we could turn a vertical community so high rises and culture. It's a really interesting concept because unlike most community communities you're walking the front door to a lift well and that's a concrete wall and then you're going up the lift and you really don't have that general sense of community. So some of the co-paging around that is around that specific pilot project. We are always calling up when to say where can we actually join up and do some work together. We've got some really great buy-in around our cold program so very much with MFP, Victoria police and CFA on that and we're getting some really great traction as well from Department of Health and Human Services and some of our other key partner agencies. So we are actually doing this more and more often. We're getting a great buy-in. There is great buy-in at this stage I have heard from yesterday there are still some challenges on the ground to actually work together around that and we'll support you in every way that we can to make sure that the messages are going up down and across to make sure that everybody is actually that we are all integrated and this is the way of the future and it's a really great mission to get on board with. Let's take one on the floor Tracy. Hi Nick Waldron, Emerald. I just want to agree with one of the texts that came through, you're the man, okay? Anyway, I'm the bloke who's going to bring up budgets. Sorry Ewan. I had a discussion with DCO Haynes who was on the stage yesterday regarding budgets and I'll ask, and this is directed at the SES as well is that we need tools and the equipment to do the comm heads stuff we do and I am just getting a little bit, I won't swear, annoyed, thank you, annoyed that all I hear is there's no budget, there's no budget, there's no budget and I think I'm just getting fed up with it and I get dispirited, I get you know, I just want to ask both of you is to reconsider how the budgets are put together regarding CommMead CHOI and I'm going to give you an example of veritable message boards. They are absolutely vital up in the downhill on ranges to get the messages out to the communities not only in Emerald but the whole of the downhill on ranges and I'm appealing to you Ewan is to look at the budget and see if the downhill range is one of the third highest risk areas in the world so we need to get those messages out and we can't do it, we're just handing out leaflets at events and delivering stuff and all that we need stuff to be put firmly in people's faces, there's fire restrictions coming total fire band aid today etc etc and this goes to SES as well, I'm sure they have the same problem as well so that's my question and So we'll do this shared between Stephen and I so that I'll make all the platitudes and no promises and then Stephen can pick up the rest I actually did get some warning Adam Barnettis in the audience somewhere, I saw him out in the car park and he said there's going to be a question about budgets and I said that's easy because you know I'll just tell him we work within the budget and he said don't try that line because it's not going to work but look I could go into a safety forum, I could walk onto any fire station last night I had a passionate group who are asking for heavy tanker at Kongma everywhere across our organisation there are passionate people who are wanting money to follow through with their particular project and I guess it's not an easy job sifting and sorting that and government are high on the list, government come along and they'll fund certain projects and often they are big projects which take a lot of money which sometimes distract us so I suppose my challenge back to you is to say yes we'll certainly take on board every year we try and win extra resources I see the role of people like Steven and mine pretty simple we create a bit of direction and a lot of the time that comes from you people we win resources so that you can do what you've got to do and then we take the blame when it goes wrong but I guess a reflection and I've probably been a little bit unfair to my community safety people I don't know that we've said what's the number one priority of community education, community engagement activity that we absolutely have to fund and if we've got this amount of money you know let's rank them and order them to make sure that whatever funding we've got is going into the most effective ways now I know there are conversations and we do evaluation of our community safety program but I'm just not sure where it's held in is that I can't promise additional funding for the community education, community safety function but what I can say yesterday you would have seen Michael Wooden here, you would have seen Mark Thomas, we had Mark Solomon, I don't know whether he's still here, he banged the drums yesterday we had John Haynes here yesterday, Steve Warrington is winding up with a where to from here you've got me here today so you've got a lot of and obviously Andrew is here with Quinn, you've got a lot of senior people who by their very presence and commitment are saying we support you if you're saying you need more money that message is received and received loud and clear and maybe we've got to do better we'll try and do that, Steven from our point of view obviously our budget is quite a lot smaller than others in the emergency management field but what we're doing is working very hard with the current government about the terms of reference to look at our funding we're looking at the moment about our service review so what services we'll be in and obviously this education resilience and working with our community is high on the agenda for us to move into and do more of and we're doing that within obviously budgets that are pretty restricted at the moment but the terms of reference that we've put up to the government to look at a parliamentary review is all the sounds are very good for government about saying we really need to look at how we resource the SES in the future and we need to do that in a bipartisan way because what tends to happen to us is probably happens to a number of organisations including the CFA is you go into an election cycle and you get promises from one side and it doesn't get reflected if there's a change of government so we need to get much better bipartisan support about what we need as a sector so we're doing that at the moment so I think that's a very positive for us and hopefully we'll see some announcements around that but the other thing I think is exactly what we're doing in this room today is the state government and federal governments are really struggling as they'll tell us to find revenue sources for all the things we want to do and we see that debate around taxation etc. we've got to come back with well how do we work much more efficiently with the resources that we've got in a combined way and that's exactly what we're doing in these sorts of forums is saying well the resource scarce resources that we've got on our plate how can we actually work together so that governments can see that they're getting great value from the money that they're putting out. I'm not saying that we don't need more but at least I think we can put up our heads and saying well of the resources that are out there we're actually working very efficiently and we've got some work to do I know and that but I think that we can put up our heads high and say in the emergency services sector we're turning our mind to how can we look at those scarce resources and use them better. So there's a couple of I think positive things that are happening already both in the SES but the sector wide. One from the floor. Chief, Don Gallick from Wendery. There's been a couple of text messages and I just want to talk a little bit about the fire services review that's just kind of come out of nowhere. I've got some deep concerns about integration and amalgamation which everybody we are as one except that I think that different groups have different ideas about what that means. My concerns are around the loss of integrated brigades the loss of the title firefighter, things that are mentioned in the terms of reference. It's a great opportunity you've talked to a large group of especially that I apologize to SES colleagues to the CFA volunteers about some of the implications of the fire service review. Thanks Don and for those who might not be aware the government announced the review of the fire services so it was interesting that it wasn't about the sector as such and without having the terms of reference in front of me there are some important common words there. One of the terms of reference dealt with the resourcing of the fire services so you might go to the previous question that maybe this is an opportunity to say in some areas we're not properly resourced. It also very much went to the question about interoperability. I guess I'd put it in the context that we are on a journey and if one looks at a lot of ministerial statements it talks about reform within the emergency management sector and there's been some huge changes even in the last five years since 2009 not only about how the emergency services work but also how we work with the broader emergency management sector. In terms of one fire service or one fire emergency service I think one doesn't need to go any further than the statement by emergency services minister Jane Garrett on Thursday when the review was announced and on Friday I think she spoke on John Fane and she was very firm in saying that this is not about one fire service. However we need to recognise that these reviews often will be a bit dispassionate, independent and they may point to things that we can do to make us more effective and more efficient with MFB. So my view with the fire services review is to welcome it and if it points to ways in which we can become more efficient, more effective then that's a good thing. I also back to the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission where the topic of a single fire service was debated long and hard and the evidence is still on the Victorian Bushfire Commission Royal Commission report and there was some very strong evidence given by a number of emergency management consultants and experts in change that said just because you've got fire, common as the middle word in your organisational name doesn't mean you should be one organisation that you need to consider the culture and the people within the organisation I think this goes to the hard what you were saying Don. So you know the if Craig Lapsley was here, you know this terminology we've got about working as one you know that it's working as one, not working as one team so I think there's a bit subtle here and I think we recognise that each agency, be it Red Cross or SES or Victoria Police or CFA has developed with a long history and a culture which each agency is really proud of its culture and you can't change that overnight and you need to respect that because if you don't you'll end up losing the people and particularly the volunteers so I'd suggest that the journey we're going down Don is one where we continue to work more closely with each other example in front of us today with SES and CFA but we need to challenge ourselves to do that even better will we be changing the one fires don't know it won't be a political decision but the minister signalled quite strongly on Friday that that's not what's on the agenda it's about the efficiency, effectiveness and the funding of the fire services now I probably haven't spent as much time analysing the terms of reference as I should have but I hope that somehow gives my position on it and reflects what I've heard the minister saying about it Don. You've got time for one more question can you talk about SES? It's not on it, it is on it. Where is Julder on West Fire Brigade? You talked about budgets and I was just wondering whether there's an opportunity in terms of economies of scale to build community safety training programs that are across the sector so rather than the CFA building a training program to train its volunteers on how to deliver community safety and the SES doing the same thing with the community facilitation we could save some money by actually working together to deliver one community safety training package that could be then trained across both sectors and that just not just works for community safety also and I think I picked up before also extends through to primary schools as well like I picked up I think if I heard correctly it was Ben was saying that there is going to be some work done around building a training program to deliver to primary schools across agencies, is that correct? In terms of can we get economies of scale by working together to deliver one training program to train our volunteers to deliver community safety messaging? Yeah I mean I think on the first instance it's I think in the first instance we have to agree on messaging and that's part of what we're doing with EMV as well as again it's Craig actually said EMV is not an organisation it's the way we're going to do emergency management and it's emergency management for Victoria and I think in the end space that EMV has only been around for a year they're doing some really good work it's going to take a little bit longer for what they're working on to really they're rubber to hit the road so it's certainly on the radar and it's the pin is getting faster and faster if you like so but I think that's the way to go you know I was thinking about it earlier that I mean there's all sorts of questions that have come up on the screen and I sit there thinking of an answer and by that stage it's just moved on but there's a lot of great work that's being done and a lot of work in that consolidated space you know I mean I said there was one thing about emergency management throughout Australia and I mean at ECS we've been working on this revision of our strategic communications approach you know messaging and going out to communities we've actually talked to the other ECS's around the country and then we'll go on yeah we're in and so if we actually get this through it could be the first example of a nationwide campaign for ECS which should just be a magic one and absolutely but just to build on that at the national level at AFAC we've got a community safety group and all the agencies work together to look at because 80% of what we do is the same it's just the context has changed whether it's fire, whether it's flood, whether it's earthquake, whether it's whatever it might be so at a national level AFAC's been providing a lot of leadership and I know that you know SCS or the SCFA they're someone and so forth so that we get consistency and we also look at economies of scale it'll take time 20 years ago it was no you can only talk about one message now it's you have one opportunity to talk to the community so talk to them about safety and I suppose the next step for us is it might not be us talking to the community it might be another group so how do we empower that other group so they can pass their message when they're talking about food or when they're talking about whatever it might be sorry guys we will have to wrap it up we have gone a bit over time yeah I'm sorry we will have to move on someone has asked a question can we get a copy of all the comments that have come up so we've said yes that's going to happen so Haright I think we should come across and I think that's what these guys have displayed so well done alright so now we've got a longer breakout before morning tea so start thinking about where you're going to head please be mindful the mobile education unit is outside on the bus to my left in 30 people only so first