The whole fire and rescue model in South Australia is broken. You have the UFU, CFSVA and individual CFS groups and brigades all pushing their own agenda's mixed in with the overriding governance from management of the CFS, MFS and SAFECOM.
Wouldn't it be a perfect world where the red and white appliance boundary was dissolved and resources were utilised more efficiently without red trucks passing white sitting in stations and vice versa.
Response statistics provided in Annual Reports show paid stations have been built servicing areas that go to less incidents than some of their neighbouring volunteer brigades as well as retained brigades going to less incidents than volunteer brigades. Why not have a model that can be changed to provide the best level of service to the community that is based on sound strategic, tactical and budgetary foundations for the community of South Australia. In a perfect world every station would be paid, but would that be economically viable, we all know the answer!
For example the station is volunteer the level of response gets to a point were it is higher then you make it retained to provide those fire fighters with remuneration for their services and when it gets to a point where it becomes too onerous then it becomes paid. That way you could have this mix across the whole state even in the ever increasing urban sprawl. Maybe even one service then we could look at utilising services better in management, training, engineering, fire safety (educational programs) and other services provided to the public instead of duplicating services. Also look at the way fire stations are constructed and costed so we are not rebuilding stations or relocating so often in the suburbs with high price tags!
Probably never happen in my life time and just my thoughts!
