Northern Territory Second Reading Speeches

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FIRE AND EMERGENCY AMENDMENT BILL 2004

Bill presented and read a first time.

Mr HENDERSON (Police, Fire and Emergency Services): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.

The Fire and Emergency Act and regulations have been in place for over seven years, in which time the Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service has recognised some areas of the act that need to be reinforced and updated. Most of the amendments proposed in this bill reflect existing functions carried out by the Fire and Rescue Service under its more general powers. However, owing to the high importance of public safety, the risks involved and the need for legal certainty in enforcing fire safety requirements, express statutory authority is seen as desirable.

These functions which the bill proposes to clarify are: biological and radiological decontamination – an Incident Command already has wide powers to deal with all emergencies, but an express provision to require persons who may be contaminated by biological agents, such as anthrax or radioactive materials, is seen as desirable in the interests of public awareness and safety.

Fire Investigation – provision is already made in the act for the Director of Fire and Rescue to appoint fire investigators, but fire investigation is not specified as a role of the service. Fire hazard reduction programs and back burning are established practices to prevent the spread and seriousness of our rural fires, and it is seen as desirable to include hazard reduction as an express function of the NTFRS, and to create an express power to back burn, which is currently carried out under the Incident Commander’s general powers, which changes will avoid any potential conflict with other sections of the act which prohibit the lighting of fires.

Public awareness and education programs, which are a popular and integral part of the Fire and Rescue Service’s fire reduction strategy, and including an express power to carry out these functions, and the power to recover costs of consumables for these programs where appropriate, and is consistent with other Australian fire services. Note that there is no proposal for any new regime of additional charges. This legislative change is designed to provide a solid legal basis for the current practice of seeking contributions to the expense of recharging fire extinguishers used for demonstrations and similar costs.

The express power to make user pays agreements for provision of fire services with major commercial enterprises is proposed to provide for legal certainty in the two existing arrangements, with Nhulunbuy Corporation for the airport and township, and with the Yulara Resort entity, but there is no plan to approach other existing enterprises with arrangements of this nature, nor are any new arrangements proposed.

An express power to enter contractual arrangements for the provision of ancillary fire safety arrangements is also proposed, to facilitate projects such as the NT Fast Alarm Monitoring System, pioneered by the Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service, and which is used to protect many of our public and commercial buildings in the Territory today.

Two more of these fire fighting amendments require special mention – building safety and rail safety. The safety of buildings to which the public has access is a major concern to all of us, but particularly t our Fire and Rescue Service. Experienced members of the service regularly inspect commercial premises and buildings to which the public has access, and most commercial operators and property owners welcome the Fire and Rescue Service, value their advice and follow safety directions in the interests of commercial security and public safety. Regrettably, and inevitably, there will always be a few operators who prefer to set different priorities, for instance, by keeping fire exit doors locked, or by not maintaining fire service equipment. The NTFRS already has the power to issue fire infringement notices, and does so from time to time. However, a more authoritative legislative basis for this regulatory work is seen as desirable to ensure the success of prosecutions in very serious cases.

The existing Fire and Emergency regulations already provide for the prescription of classes of buildings, essentially public and commercial buildings, which must comply with additional regulatory fire safety measures. This system is to be given greater legal authority through an express provision in a new section of the act. In addition, there is also to be a new power for the NTFRS to prescribe individual buildings by notice, and for the director to issue notices requiring compliance with a particular fire safety requirement. This is not a power that would be used often, but would be used, for instance, in a situation where a private shed which does not belong to a class of prescribed buildings in the regulations was being used to store highly inflammable chemicals, or in other circumstances which presented a high fire risk. Additional express safety requirement such as a duty to ensure that fire fighting equipment on prescribed premises is maintained, will be included in new regulations and will be backed up by creation of additional offences. This initiative will be part of a whole-of-government approach to issues of building fire safety.

As for the railway, this bill identifies the Fire and Rescue Service as the lead agency in dealing with rail and other transport accidents. In reality, the Fire and Rescue Service already attends to rail accidents but these amendments provide powers to enter and deal with emergencies on railway property comparable with existing powers for road accidents and other emergencies. The Fire and Rescue Service is a member of the Rail Safety Unit and has had detailed emergency plans in place since mid-2003 for dealing with incidents on the Alice Springs to Darwin railway.

Where public safety is at stake, it is important that relevant legislation has teeth, and that the penalties are an adequate deterrent to people, for reasons of convenience or neglect, who might not meet the standards we require. The Fire and Emergency Act will move to the penalty point system for fines, involving a modest but necessary increase of around 10% from the level of fines in place since 1996, and will also harmonise its fire infringement notice scheme in line with other such schemes by allowing the withdrawal of a fire infringement notice to enable a formal prosecution to be instituted where the offence is sufficiently serious.

We owe a great deal to our volunteers and the tireless efforts of our fire and emergency volunteers. The Fire and Rescue Service has amongst its volunteer units six groups who are referred to as Fire and Emergency Response Groups or FERGs. These combine fire service auxiliaries, volunteers and emergency service volunteers as one unit. FERGs are volunteers in the small towns of the Northern Territory including Elliott, Pine Creek, Batchelor, Adelaide River, Mataranka and Timber Creek. FERGs are trained in fire fighting, first aid and road accident rescue, and are also trained by the Northern Territory Emergency Service in search and rescue and, in some locations, cliff rescue. All fire and emergency equipment and supplies are provided by the NTFRS and NT Emergency Service and they operate as part of these services.

However, as an experiment, the legislation which created them in 1996 deemed them to be incorporated under the Associations Incorporation Act. The intention of this novel provision was to provide a corporate entity through which fundraising activities could be carried out and which could operate its own bank account and, incidentally, might protect volunteers and the government from possible public liability arising from fundraising activities. In practice, the deemed association has not proved very useful in the smaller units where no major fundraising initiatives are carried out, and it is doubtful whether it would, in practice, provide much legal protection to volunteers or government. Members of FERGs are already protected under section 47 of the act and are covered under the Work Health Act. With the passing of the Personal Injuries (Liabilities and Damages) Act 2003, volunteers are further protected from personal liability. It is proposed, therefore, to end this experiment in deemed incorporation. FERGs will still have the option to incorporate as independent associations under the Associations Incorporation Act, as do the larger emergency service response groups if they wish to conduct substantial fundraising activities.

This government recognises that fire safety to the community is an important issue which has been highlighted by the recent fires in Central Australia. Government believes that the amendments will provide the NTFRS with the means to improve incident control and the means to raise the community’s awareness of fire safety issues. Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members.

Debate adjourned.

 

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