Right: Doubtful: Senator Pauline Hanson urged caution in implementing something like a compulsory ''volunteer'' scheme, saying ''A lot of these kids can't even turn up for a job application or turn up to get a job''.
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Arguments in favour of conscripting youth into emergency services
1. Young people and others would acquire valuable skills
Supporters of a national emergency service program have argued that it would increase the skill base of those who took part and would be of particular value to the unemployed.
Anthony Bergin, a senior fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and Paul Barnes, head of the ASPI's Risk and Resilience Program, have noted that a program such as that proposed by Senator Lambie could be used to help provide skills and training to the unemployed.
Bergin and Barnes stated, 'We still have large numbers of young people not in education, employment or training and older unemployed workers who are less likely to find new employment.' They have suggested, 'a one-year program during which participants work in a volunteer organisation, gaining and practising skills applicable in emergencies, including in organisations active in the welfare and recovery side of emergency management.'
Bergin and Barnes have further suggested that such a scheme 'could assist in retraining long-term unemployed people of various ages. Participants might receive benefits at a higher rate than the Newstart Allowance. Some conditions of eligibility would be mandatory, such as not being in education, employment or training for six months before an application and being a recipient of Newstart support.'
When making her proposal, Senator Lambie stressed the lack of basic skills among many young people, skills which are of vital importance in the event of a natural disaster. Senator Lambie stated, 'That bothers me. It bothers me that kids today wouldn't know a bloody sandbag, let alone a spade.'
In 2014, Senator Lambie suggested a return to military-based national service which she had similarly argued would increase the skills of the unemployed. She stated,' In six weeks we could have these guys with truck licences, we can have them with clerical experience ... it's got to be better than being on the dole.'
The valuable skills training acquired within emergency services has been recognised for over a decade. In 2004, Christine Hayes of Swinburne University of Technology TAFE and Barry Golding and Jack Harvey of the University of Ballarat investigated the skills acquired through training with emergency services. They stated, 'Local fire brigades and state emergency service units are important sources and sites of adult learning in rural and remote communities. Apart from the important role of facilitating social capital - trust, reciprocity, networks - and encouraging informal learning through regular training, they offer opportunities for volunteers, particularly men, to engage informally accredited learning... The skills they learn through their public safety organisations are transferable to, and demonstrably useful in, other aspects of their community, home and work life.'
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has stressed the training and experience benefits that working with emergency services can provide. QUT states, 'Full training is provided by your local SES unit. First aid, operating communications equipment, working safely at heights, ropes, knots & holdfasts, ladders, storm response, land search, emergency lighting and generators, vertical rescue, flood boat operations, map reading and navigation, chainsaw operations and incident management are just some of the courses available to SES members. The SES-run courses are nationally accredited...'
Working within emergency services is similar to the Community Work Skills program offered by the Queensland Department of Employment, Small Business and Training designed to give the unemployed training and work experience that will ready them for paid employment.
2. Hours devoted to volunteer activities are dropping, including in emergency services
Recent statistics indicate that the percentage of Australians taking part in volunteer activities of all kinds is declining.
An article published in The Conversation on September 24, 2015 written by Melanie Oppenheimer (Chair of History at Flinders University) et al noted, 'With close to two-thirds of Australia's population not volunteering in 2014, the volunteering rate has slipped five percentage points from a high of 36% in 2010 (when equivalent data was last collected). That decrease reversed a 20-year trend of increasing participation.'
This appears to be part of a long-term and accelerating trend toward reduced hours given per volunteering individual. Oppenheimer et al observe, 'Viewing the statistics at an individual level...the median annual hours contributed by volunteers has fallen from 74 hours in 1995, to 72 hours in 2000, and to 56 hours in 2006.'
The problem has become particularly acute in rural communities as Australia's non-metropolitan population has fallen under the pressure of the amalgamation of rural properties, automation, drought and a resultant lack of job opportunities and services have contributed to a rural decline.
Changing farm management models are creating a lack of succession options for some rural fire brigades. Many country towns have noticeably fewer men and women aged between 30 and 50 years old, as land management models change, requiring less labour.
Inspector Bowden, the District Manager for the Canobolas Fire Zone, headquartered in Orange, New South Wales, has stated, 'A lot of properties would have had two, three or more people running those properties. Whereas these days, they are one-man shows and those one-man shows are normally the most senior person.'
Inspector Bowden further argues that changing land use in regional areas was changing the type of neighbourly interaction, as well as the type of resident.
The Inspector has stated, 'You only have to look around the Mount Canobolas area for example. People have split [properties] up into 20 and 30-acre lifestyle blocks - 30 years ago that was all orchards.
With the land-use change, you also get a different type of resident.'
This point has been supported by Lower Portland Superintendent Karen Hodges who has observed the impact of people moving out of Sydney onto lifestyle blocks in the Hawkesbury.
Superintendent Hodges has stated, 'I'm not sure if it's a lot of people moving out from the city, out into the rural lands and think that the fire brigade is the same as Fire and Rescue and that they don't need to put things into it.'
In an article published in The Conversation on May 15, 2018, Amanda Davies, Associate Professor Curtin University; Kirsten Holmes, Professor, School of Marketing, Curtin University and Leonie Lockstone-Binney, Associate Dean (Research) William Angliss Institute stated, 'Australia's rural communities are facing a looming volunteering crisis, driven in part by a rapidly ageing population, and residents moving away from rural communities. This is combined with volunteer burnout as the government defunds essential services in these areas, leaving volunteers to pick up the slack.
Davies et al have stressed the significant impact a lack of emergency volunteers is having on some rural communities. They note, for example, 'For the town of Manjimup in Western Australia, with a population of 4,000, a volunteer shortage has resulted in some essential services being at risk. The ambulance service, for instance, is now reliant on volunteers from the nearby town of Bridgetown. This involves Bridgetown volunteers driving some 40kms to Manjimup, then transferring patients to the regional hospital in Bunbury another 130kms away before driving 100kms back to their homes.'
3. Australia's emergency service volunteers lack diversity and are ageing
Australia's volunteer emergency management services appear to be suffering from a restricted recruitment base (Anglo-Australian males) and to have failed to attract new membership. The result is an increasing age profile. Concern has been expressed that this lack of diversity and the increasing age of the volunteer emergency services membership base will reduce their effectiveness and may ultimately endanger their survival. It has been argued that a larger, younger and more varied membership is necessary to guarantee that Australia's volunteer emergency services will be able to continue their work into the future.
In 2005 Jim McLennan and Adrian Birch of La Trobe University produced a report titled 'Recruiting and Retaining Australia's Firefighters'. They noted, 'All fire services report a common set of current difficulties associated with volunteer numbers. In many rural communities, volunteer brigade member numbers have dropped and those remaining are ageing. In some new housing developments on urban/rural fringes, brigade memberships remain low, notwithstanding increased protection level needs. For many brigades on urban/rural fringes, it is difficult to find crews 9-5 weekdays.
Other issues identified include under-representation of volunteers from a non-Anglo Australian cultural background and under-representation of women, particularly in operational roles.'
The same issues appear to have persisted within volunteer emergency services over the next ten years. In October 2014, Anthony Bergin, noted that Australia's more than 500,000 emergency management volunteers were predominantly male and had an average age of 48 years, with very few from non-Anglo Australian backgrounds.
This problem of an ageing of emergency service volunteers has been noted in Victoria.
A report released in February 2014 by the Victoria Auditor General titled 'Managing Emergency Services Volunteers' stated, 'The majority of volunteers, by both proportion and number, are aged over 45 years, and rates of volunteer participation in people aged over 65 years are comparatively higher.'
Similarly, a newsletter published three years later, in 2017, by the Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades WA Inc stated that despite the 26,000 fire and emergency services volunteers across the State, demographic shifts across Western Australia continued to challenge the sustainability of the volunteer workforce. The letter claimed, 'WA faces declining numbers of regional volunteers and a steady increase in average age, which is impacting volunteers' capability and capacity to respond to incidents.'
Across Australia, volunteer emergency services have recognised the need to attract younger recruits from a more diverse background. They also recognise that these services may need to adapt in order to attract and retain these new recruits.
The Australian Journal of Emergency Management's April 2018 edition has noted, 'Diversity research has indicated that there is benefit in a mixed variety of perspectives and experiences, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) may gain from millennials moving around all the time. A volunteer from the Victorian Country Fire Authority may transfer into the NSW RFS bringing a range of skills and experiences the service isn't always used to.' The Journal further noted that emergency services 'must be ready for this generation [millennials] to begin taking over the reins when older generations hang up their boots.'
4. Demographic changes and the effects of climate change are putting emergency services under increased pressure
It has been argued that there are increasing demands on Australia's already stretched emergency services and that these demands require an increased membership.
The traditional demands placed upon emergency service deliverers in Australia are large and varied. In 2015 the Tasmanian Fire Service detailed these as emergency response and suppression of all types of fires; marine and aviation response; urban search and rescue; vertical rescue; hazmat incidents; road crash rescue; community fire education and training; fire equipment sales and service; fire alarm monitoring; and fire investigation.
In addition, there are several factors affecting Australia that are increasing the demands placed on the country's emergency services. One of these is the country's ageing population.
All Australian states have recognised their changing demographics now and into the future.
A 2004 Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance study noted, 'While the future is inherently unpredictable, it is certain that the combination of low fertility rate plus lengthening life spans will result in a gradual ageing of the Australian and Victorian populations. In 2001, 13 per cent of the Victorian population was aged 65 years and over. By 2042 it is projected that this group will have grown to 25.8 per cent of our population.'
The same study recognised that this progressive ageing of the population would place unequal demands on resources, with a larger burden likely to fall on rural communities. It noted, 'Small rural and remote regions are ageing faster than the rest of Victoria. In some instances, this will lead to an adjustment period where age-related increases in service delivery demands are greater than the available skilled working age population to service those demands.'
The Tasmanian Fire Service has cited a United States study to demonstrate that ageing populations are more vulnerable to natural disasters and place increased demands on emergency services. The 2013 United States report 'showed that people aged 65 years or older accounted for 35 per cent of fire deaths in the US in 2010, while only comprising 13 per cent of the population. Further, the relative risk of individuals aged 65 years or over dying in a fire was 2.7 times greater than that of the general population. The report goes on to highlight the concern of the ageing population, where it is estimated the older population will comprise 19 per cent of the total by 2030.' The Tasmanian Fire Service noted, 'Australia is on a similar trajectory, where older people will comprise a larger proportion of the total population.'
Climate change involving increased droughts, fires and floods is also placing dramatically increased demands on Australia's emergency services. In 2018 the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council stated, 'The impacts of a changing climate are increasing in intensity, severity, frequency and duration: it is recognised that even if aggressive steps are taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions over coming years, a proportion of climate change is effectively "locked in" to the atmosphere.'
The same Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council report also noted that not only does climate change mean that natural disasters are becoming more frequent, more severe and longer lasting, they are also tending to 'cascade'; that is, occur simultaneously. The report noted, 'In Tasmania, the January 2016 bushfires in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area occurred simultaneously with severe east coast flooding. Concurrent events stretch the capacity of the sector to respond, particularly in disrupting or destroying key infrastructure.'
These increasing pressures have highlighted the insufficient number of emergency service volunteers to respond to these disasters. This point has been stressed by independent Senator Jacki Lambie, who has argued on her Internet site, 'We are seeing more extreme weather events - floods, cyclones, bushfires - and our emergency services are finding themselves stretched thin...
The Jacqui Lambie Network believes that part of the solution is to provide the opportunity for young people not in employment or training to contribute. We support the concept of a National Service for young Australians aged between 18 and 25 who are without job or education prospects...'
5. Conditions of eligibility would ensure appropriate participants who will then be treated fairly
Defenders of Jacqui Lambie's scheme to conscript young people into the emergency services argue that their aptitude would be taken into account and that they would be trained and employed appropriately.
Senator Lambie has stated, 'We support the concept of a National Service for young Australians aged between 18 and 25 who are without job or education prospects as a means of providing them with job-ready skills, purpose and qualifications, over a 12-month period, if they are deemed physically and psychologically able to participate.' Senator Lambie's supporters note the emphasis placed here on the conscripts being 'physically and psychologically able to participate'.
Senator Lambie has also stressed that these young people would be thoroughly trained so that they would be able to perform effectively within the emergency services and would also acquire personally useful skills that would make them more employment ready.
The Senator has explained, 'Participants will be fed, clothed, housed and given medical and dental care. More importantly, National Service will teach basic survival skills, discipline, first aid training, resilience and will help instill a sense of purpose in participants' lives. The training that will be provided will go beyond the technical skills needed to get the job done. Past National Servicemen went on to pursue successful, fulfilling careers in the civilian workplace. National Service taught teamwork, responsibility, initiative, leadership, habits of healthy living and discipline as well as skills in self-defence.'
Anthony Bergin and Paul Barnes of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) are supporters of Senator Lambie's proposal that some young Australians be required to work within Australia's emergency services. The ASPI promotes the establishment of an emergency management volunteer program (EMVP). The EMVP envisages a system that would match young people to the fields within which they are to be trained.
Bergin and Barnes have described the scheme in this manner - 'An EMVP would be a one-year program during which participants work in a volunteer organisation, gaining and practising skills applicable in emergencies, including in organisations active in the welfare and recovery side of emergency management...
Similar to the Australian Defence Force's Gap Year program...but tailored for the emergency management sector, the program would pair individuals with volunteer organisations based on their interests and suitability. It would introduce a common national approach to the training of volunteers, which would enable them to contribute service cross-jurisdictionally.'
While noting that participants would be matched to areas according to 'their interests and suitability', Bergin and Barnes have also stressed the benefits that such a scheme could offer the unemployed and perhaps those on a disability pension. They have stated, 'An EMVP also could assist in retraining long-term unemployed people of various ages. Participants might receive benefits at a higher rate than the Newstart ðAllowance. Some conditions of eligiðbility would be mandatory, such as not being in education, employment or training for six months before an application and being a recipient of Newstart support. It also might be viable to extendð EMVP opportunities, with appropriate streams of activity, to people on disability pensions.'
Regarding suitability, Bergin and Barnes have additionally noted, 'Further suitability criteria would be relevant, such as trainðability, fitness/health, working with children checks, and agreeing to a minimum number of years of service with volunteer groups after completion of the program.'