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Council criticises SES ‘gobbledygook’

Posted on November 5, 2009, 8:08am and updated on November 5, 2009 at 10:45 am

A Grant district councillor has described a letter from SES headquarters over its plan to relocate two senior Mount Gambier employees to Murray Bridge as “gobbledygook”.

Cr Alan Hill said he read the letter from SA SES chief officer Stuart Macleod five times and still did not get a grasp of what he was saying.

“What he is saying is gobbledygook … it is two and a half pages of nothing,” Cr Hill said.

He said the letter did not even guarantee that the whole of the SES would not be moved to Murray Bridge.

The councillor described the situation as “ridiculous” and claimed it could put people’s lives at risk because the Mount Gambier district was a high fire risk area.

The SES played a pivotal role in emergency management during Ash Wednesday.

“Why can’t they centralise them all here (Mount Gambier)?” Cr Hill asked.

His comments follow the SES authorities pushing forward with their controversial plans to relocate two senior staff from Mount Gambier to Murray Bridge to form a centralised management unit.

Grant District Council has been lobbying against the move since the plan was first announced.

Meanwhile, Cr Richard Sage questioned why the government spent significant money on a new emergency services building when they were about to relocate the main people to Murray Bridge.

“This is unbelievable,” Cr Sage said.

He called on council to vent its dissatisfaction with the move.

“Why are they taking qualified, well-trained people out of the area?” Cr Sage said.

He said if council did not lobby against it then it would just “slip by”.

Grant district mayor Don Pegler was also critical of the move, claiming it would take local well-trained people from the area.

“We will lose people with a lot of knowledge about the area,” Mr Pegler said.

He said these people were also critical members of the local disaster management zone group.

Council resolved to write to Member for Mount Gambier Rory McEwen to ask what he is doing about the situation.

But according to Mr Macleod, staff were being centralised from across Murray/Mallee, Limestone Coast and Fleurieu Peninsula to enhance operational capabilities by the development of a team approach.

He said the centralisation of staff would not change the group’s response to regional communities in times of need.

“This will greatly enhance the SES corporate capacity to coordinate and assist during emergencies, rather than have our resources distributed across three geographically diverse locations, each five hours apart,” Mr Macleod said.

“SES volunteers across the region have generally expressed their support for the combining of staff resources into a single point of presence which will, for the first time, see all services delivered from a single location.”

He said this would reduce the impact on volunteer time, provide a one-stop-shop to support the SES volunteer network, their training, administration and response coordination.

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