If an idea is worth doing it is worth doing badly. So wrote one sagacious wit and we could twist the aphorism slightly to argue if something is really worth doing, it is worth doing alone. This could apply to long overdue legislation to guarantee support for firefighters who may have contracted cancer through their duties. Given the scare that the Fiskville contamination caused so many fire-fighters this will be a law close to the hearts of many volunteers and professional fire-fighters alike. It is little wonder the linking of this legislation with the creation of a new wider urban fire service separate from the CFA has been met with disappointment. The Victorian Opposition has branded it cynical manipulation and it would be hard not to see it as a cunning expedient or attaching strings to an otherwise worthwhile objective.
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However after an already notorious campaign of obfuscation and misinformation from both polarised combatants, the opposition added another ill–chosen contribution; unattributed robo-calls from Glen, seemingly a CFA volunteer who is worried about the CFA being torn apart.
CFA chief executive Frances Diver labelled the campaign irresponsible and unfounded. The ‘panic’ campaign and questionably inciting fears that lives will be risked; a claim the union makes unless the CFA is split up - while the opposition says lives rely on things staying as is, shows just how poorly politics can obscure and bog down the best outcome.
1200 Victorian volunteer CFA stations left alone after the “splitting” legislation, will effectively operate unchanged. It is in the integrated stations like Ballarat that it will have an effect but the operational details and the staffing have not yet been made clear. They may yet be worth protesting over but so far this is just more wasted energy for political point-scoring, further muddying a touchy issue.
It seems quite a few actual fire fighters agree. CFA's chief officer Steve Warrington wants people to "stop blueing" over his organisation. Warrington is unequivocal about the effect on public safety; "I have to say, any suggestion that we are not providing a quality service to the Victorian community is absolute rubbish," he said.
Such clarity is to be commended in an all too often miasmic issue. If the State Government is so sure of the merit of the two parts of its legislation would it not have served better - for clarity alone- to keep them separate and get them done on their merits.
