Personally, I think it's time all country services joined together to form one service, reduce duplication (numerous sheds, stations, vehicles, equipment, cars, training courses, facilities etc, etc, etc, etc)
As per my original post there are many towns across SA that have professional volunteers performing, fire, rescue, search, medical, retrieval and alike from a range of services from VMR, CFS, Coast Guard, SAAS, SES, Mines Rescue and alike.
These people are not effected by ministers, political parties or alike, they are affected by money limitations, training and what time they can committ to serving their community.
An umbrella service that provides all (bar law enforcement) from one building utilising multi skilled vehicles with appropriately trained crews (ie don't need to be a jack of all trades, rather a master of at least one) would suit most communities, provide better service to the public and remove the perceived or actual us and them. Plus with the monies saved, we could update allot of vehicles, refine our training to one standard, not many and allow people to have input where they feel they can - sorry for the common sense, but when you travel around Australia and Over seas and see the many differnet models and speak to the people doing it on the ground - WE have a long way to go.
OK - will get off my horse now and return to reality where people like to build silo,s have issues with other service or a new service providing their "traditional service" and where most of the decision makers are older, reluctant to change, were once practitioners - many, many many years ago and are waiting their time, their gold cards and to join the Pension ques
