Emergency Services commissioner Dominic Lane has rejected the suggestion of a culture of bullying and misogyny in the fire service, and says he is “very confident” that firefighters now understand why pornographic material is not acceptable in fire stations.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Speaking after the release of a review into two cases of sexual harassment in the fire service, Mr Lane said the vast majority of firefighters accepted that “things have moved on since the 1960s”, and in his visits to fire stations since he has been in the job over the past year, he had never seen inappropriate material.
The training people had started to pull material down themselves. “That was a big step forward for fire and rescue. You can’t deny, for people who haven’t been exposed to the importance of the [respect, equity and diversity] framework before, that I think in the main it was picked up very well,” he said.
If resistance still existed, it was only among “a very small element”. “Whilst the reviewer touched on that, I just put that down to a legacy issue,” Mr Lane said.
“How can one ever be completed assured in relation to things like inappropriate material or culture? Obviously, I can’t. But that’s the whole reason why we’ve put such a big focus on the women in emergency services strategy and getting a better gender balance.”
Emergency Services Minister Simon Corbell to attract more women into the fire service, and Mr Lane said he hoped most recruits at the new training college would be women. The training college was at least a year away and in the meantime the fire service would be explaining to women why they should join the ranks of firefighters.
Asked about the findings of a poor relationship between the fire service and the Justice and Community Safety Directorate, Mr Lane said the point was not whether there was a poor relationship but that firefighters understood they were government employees and required to work under the public service rules.
“We’re not a family, we’re public sector employees and we’re required to behave as such, and the community expects us to behave in line with the conditions of our employment,” he said. “Obviously this particular story shines a huge light on it as a reminder to all our staff, and we are using it as an opportunity to remind people of their behaviours.”
Mr Lane said there were nine fire stations across the city, and some progress had been made to improve privacy. The West Belconnen fire station had a shower and toilet shared between two rooms, and the two new stations being built, in Tuggeranong and Belconnen, would also improve privacy.
The Haggar review suggested the fire service rethink the use of sexualised images of male firefighters on fund-raising calendars, but Mr Lane said the union fund-raiser had stopped some time ago.
