Meeting with Emergency Services Minister
The SES Association President was delighted to meet with the Hon. Stephen Noel Dawson MLC for the first time on Thursday 10 February. Since the Ministers appointment, it has indeed been a baptism of severe weather and fire. What an induction process, welcome aboard!
Our discussion was extremely positive for a first meeting. The approach for both government and the Association is about positive actions, recognition of SES Volunteers, future SES structure under a new emergency services legislation and building community resilience in emergency management, not just a response focus.
To enable SES Volunteers to participate in some of the strategies, SES Volunteers need better training from the public safety training package. It would be nice to see more of us competing nationally recognised training through eAcademy.
A pure example of the differences in our eastern states orange family is through the National Rescue Competition. Comparing WA skills and equipment was a true example of how in the West we need to take up the opportunity for improvement.
I believe that we can look forward to a cooperative relationship with the Ministers Office as we work towards the future in the service of our communities as SES Volunteers with SES staff to support our activities.
We have the vision, we need to put that in place so we know where we want to be in twenty years as a service.
