FIREFIGHTERS have called on the ACT Electoral Commission to investigate the Emergency Services’ Agency’s (ESA) expenditure on PR consultants during the 2016 Legislative Assembly Election after it was revealed the ESA had hired two separate public relations firms to argue United Firefighters Union claims during the campaign. 

ACT United Firefighters Union secretary Greg McConville says that the union had obtained over 150 pages of material under Freedom of Information, demonstrating that the ESA had not only hired two separate public relations firms during the campaign but also deliberately concealed information that contradicted the ESA’s own campaign claims.

“The ESA campaign misleadingly claimed that while the ACT’s population was steadily growing, data also indicated that the demand for fire and rescue services is not.”

McConville says that statistics drawn from the “Report on Government Services” published by the Productivity Commission, information the ESA undoubtedly held prior to their campaign clearly demonstrate this was fundamentally incorrect.

“Instead of demand dropping for fire and rescue services as claimed by the ESA, it had in fact significantly increased,” McConville says.

“As we conveyed during the ACT on Fire campaign, ACT Fire and Rescue response increased in a number of key areas, flood and storm incidents had increased by 21.4%, other fires up by 15.9%. rescues increased by 11% and landscape fire rose by 5.9%.”

The information also confirmed that the recruitment of ACT firefighters was not keeping pace with their increasing workload.

“At the same time as the overall workload increased by 8.2% firefighter numbers increased by only 0.9%, while non-operational staff increased by 7.6%,” McConville says.

“It is alarming and distressing that the ESA knowingly deceived the ACT public by withholding information because it did not suit their public statements on firefighters workloads and public safety. Statements which we now know to be false.

“It is scandalous that the ESA can spend taxpayer money during an election on PR spin, and say the opposite of what the performance data is showing. They would have had these statistics then because they have now been published by the Productivity Commission.

“The Electoral Commission should audit the ESA’s expenditure, because they were clearly running a campaign on their own behalf to justify spending on executives instead of firefighters.”

“We need additional resources and we need them quickly.”

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