By Situation Theatre 12/11/2019

The NSW Premier will stop at nothing to find out who did this.

Adopting her serious face for the occasion, Gladys Berejiklian has pledged a full inquiry to get to the bottom of which NSW Premier has been cutting essential frontline firefighting services in recent years.

“According to the State Secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees’ Union, Leighton Drury, prior to the current state of emergency, between 20 and 30 fire-fighting trucks were classified as "offline" at any given time because there were simply not enough staff to operate them. In some cases, this means an entire station is taken offline because, in many rural areas, a station has only one truck”, Ms Berejiklian said.

The Premier quoted Drury as saying “We’re talking cuts of $21 million every year - that's about 200 jobs, or 10 stations - and anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or misleading. There's now less permanent full time (firefighters) than there were eight years ago and there’s no money to go out and recruit”.

The Premier added “Somebody, and believe me, I will find out who it was and punish them severely, cut this year’s operational budgets for Fire and Rescue and the Rural Fire Service by 12.9 million and 26.7 million respectively.”

“It’s quite frankly disgusting that as at September this year, after a restructure, there were some 175 positions in the Rural Fire Service vacant, including regional managers, fire behaviour specialists and aviation coordinators."

“I want the head of whoever is responsible.”