Surveying the empty site in Acton where a promised fire station should by now be complete and in service, union boss Greg McConville says this was one of many broken promises for which the ACT government should be held accountable.
On the 20th anniversary of the Canberra firestorm in which dozens of his members risked their lives for their community, the national secretary of the United Firefighters Union was pressing the case for the government to provide the men, services and equipment it needed to fight something similar again, should it return.
"We [the firefighters union] signed a legally binding agreement with the ACT government to build a dire station on this [Acton] site in December 2021," he said.
"As you can see, not a sod has been turned."
The union representing Canberra's firefighters has taken aim at the ACT Emergency Services Agency on the anniversary of the devastating 2003 bushfires, saying it had failed to learn the lessons of the past 20 years.
Mr McConville said Canberrans continued to be let down by the government which replaced the former Emergency Services Bureau which existed two decades ago, and was reshaped in the wake of the awful tragedy of that day when four people died and over 500 homes were lost.
That reshaping placed the ESA under the stewardship of the Justice and Community Services directorate rather than have a direct reporting line to the Minister. That added layer of government bureaucracy, he says, has proved to serve the community poorly.
"Despite the $45 million commitment by the ACT government in 2020 to expand ACT Fire and Rescue, funding has not flowed to the fire service as intended," he said.
"As well as the commitment to build this [Acton] fire station, there is a commitment by the end of this calendar year to build a new fire station at Molonglo and at this stage, we are only at the scoping stage for that project."
The irony of his bitter disappointment is that the Molonglo Valley bore the brunt of the 2003 firestorm.
Within Molonglo are the fastest growing residential areas of the the ACT and has neither its own station, nor has the highly specialised Compressed Air Foam tankers which were recommended from the wide-ranging inquiry which followed the 2003 conflagration.
The CAF tankers which eventually arrived are now 15 years old, stationed elsewhere, and due for replacement.
Canberra's unique bush capital environment demands specialised equipment. Five of the Scania pumpers which went into battle against the terrible heat, fire and embers of the 2003 firestorm failed.
He said the Volvo and Rosenbauer fire trucks which arrived to replace them had the same faults and had to be retrofitted to prevent the same failures occurring again.
"We in the ACT continue to be desperately short of firefighters," he said.
"Between 2013 and mid-2016, no firefighters were recruited at all. In the 2018/19 financial year, only six were recruited," he said.
"That's meant that firefighters continue to undertake unacceptable levels of overtime, and firefighters are being pressured into not taking their accrued leave to cover the gaps.
"A lot of these were the veteran firefighters who were on the frontline in 2003."
But ACT Emergency Services Commissioner Georgeina Whelan has defended the actions of the agency, saying multiple groups, including the United Firefighters Union, had worked together to determine user requirements and design needed to ensure any trucks procured met international safety standards.
"All of our equipment, all of our training and all of our acquisition of vehicles is a co-design between ... the Emergency Services Agency, Fire and Rescue and the United Firefighters Union," she said.
Commissioner Whelan also said there was full transparency in procurement processes and she would feel confident if the Auditor-General examined how the $45 million was spent.
"There is a procurement process for the entirety of the agency. We centralise the personnel who conduct the procurement actions but they are informed by the service representatives," she said.
"The visibility of our finances is readily available and support by our chief officers active involvement in our finance committee and how we expend our funds."
Commissioner Whelan said a recent audit report into the agency said it had improved procurement processes in recent years. But this report also found the handling of contracts may have breached the ACT's procurement laws.
The audit found a cleaning company was paid more than $8 million for work at the Emergency Services Agency over more than a decade without any scrutiny over value for money or a proper tender process.
The United Firefighters Union was also critical of a culture of "secrecy and accountability" due to layers of bureaucracy. This was a key criticism in the coronial inquest into the fires and the 2003 McLeod Inquiry, which examined the operational response to the fires.
However, Commissioner Whelan said this was a "contest of ideas", saying recommendations had been implemented and this had contributed to improvements in the agency. She pointed to the ACT having the fastest response rate in the country.
Emergency Services Minister Mick Gentleman said he had every confidence in the agency and Commissioner Whelan.
"I think you see that in the response that's being provided on the ground across the ACT, whether it's fire and rescue response, whether it's paramedic response, we are the fastest in the country," he said.
"There will always be challenges. Looking at procurement, we have a specific need for the sorts of Fire and Rescue trucks for the ACT and they're not just rolling off the production line they are modified vehicles from a European base that we need to ensure are safe for our firefighters."
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