A very interesting article was in the Weekend Australian, titled "Get Ready For the Big One" I have inserted the link to the full article for those that may not have seen Sat's paper.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25148472-28737,00.htmlThe comments in regard to volunteers I thought were right on the mark.
..."We have to recognise that a lot of our response and recovery effort is reliant on volunteers and the nongovernmental sector.
The overall cost if we had to fully fund our emergency management volunteer effort -- if we had to pay the volunteers, including overheads -- is in the order of $12 billion a year. There are more than 500,000 emergency management volunteers in Australia. They are predominantly male, average age 47, with very few from Asian, eastern European, Middle Eastern or indigenous backgrounds.
How we nurture and maintain this volunteer workforce will be a substantial challenge. Volunteers don't want to be paid. But we should be addressing volunteer costs in meeting training standards. This could be considered on a cost-share basis between the commonwealth and jurisdictions. The average cost is about $500 a year for each active volunteer member. The total cost of such an initiative would be about $150 million a year.
We need a national strategy for emergency volunteers similar to Defence Department support for employers and self-employed reservists whereby employers qualify for financial compensation if they face difficulties in releasing employees to undertake reserve duty. Given the regular deployments of emergency volunteers in support of community safety, often performed in urgent and dangerous circumstances as we saw in the Victorian bushfires, there's a strong case that similar support should be made available for the employers of our emergency volunteers.
The investment for future emergency management capability for Australia lies in volunteerism, retaining and maintaining the 500,000 Australians who make this sacrifice.
The idea from last year's 2020 summit to allow students to reduce their HECS debt with voluntary work should be treated with caution, however. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare to administer and risks producing volunteers who aren't committed. Managing volunteers is no different from managing career staff: training, supervision, indemnity insurance and police-check requirements are the same. You just can't plug in the average 20-year-old university student into a make-work scenario.
A more cost-effective strategy would be to transfer the money that would go on HECS discounts directly to the voluntary sector".
Another method for ensuring manpower / skills are available for emergency situations is what some other countries are doing. I know Singapore have National Service which includes service to the Fire. Police, Ambulance along with the military. This obviously would cost money, but if instigated for a 12 month period between high school and Uni would provide stable work force.
Open to comments (flak jacket secured)
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