Recent Gympie hearings of the Inquiry into Volunteering provided a rare example of people from the real world telling the truth, in plain English, to people in politics.
Submissions from volunteers and their representatives included strong criticisms of a much-vaunted re-organisation of emergency services last year, a re-organisation announced with the most enthusiastic and professionally crafted rhetoric.
Laws which effectively confiscated all the emergency equipment volunteers had worked for over years, were justified as “landmark legislation” (which is really only legislation) which would “improve Queensland’s response to fire, disaster and emergencies and boost the state’s resilience capacity.”
It actually did nothing of the kind, instead centralising authority with an expansionist Brisbane bureaucracy which became famous for supplying inappropriate equipment, including fire trucks which could not legally carry the water load they were outfitted for and which drove volunteer workers to such despair that thousands have walked away.
As previously reported in Gympie Today, one ex-volunteer was threatened with prosecution because he put out a fire without authorisation. Others were told they were not allowed to throw a rope to a person trapped in flood waters unless they had the appropriate qualification.
This nonsense was called “reform” in the public relations material.
Reform would, we were promised, not only make Queensland more disaster “resilient”, but would also “enhance the state’s capacity… to recover,” which is what resilience means.
Loaded language and hypnotic repetition – tricks speech writers learn at university, often in courses called “Communication.”
As they say in the classics: “Just give it to me straight.”
