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Speaker 1: I'd like to know how you feel about the firefighters

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Speaker 1: and their strike, because I have gone from soft support

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Speaker 1: for the firefighters in the last few weeks to quite

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Speaker 1: hard support today. And what's tipped me is this kerfuffle

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Speaker 1: with the board pay. I reckon. This has got to

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Speaker 1: be one of the most tone deaf things I've seen

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Speaker 1: in a very long time. The board has approved pay

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Speaker 1: rises for themselves of up to seventy nine percent. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: the firefighters have been fighting and now striking for eighteen

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Speaker 1: months just to get pay rises, while most of them

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Speaker 1: apparently sit somewhere above the minimum wage but somewhere below

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Speaker 1: the living wage, which is actually not a lot of

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Speaker 1: money to pay people who go into burning buildings. If

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Speaker 1: this board pay actually happens like it's supposed to, the

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Speaker 1: board chair is going to be paid more than any

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Speaker 1: standard firefighter on the base salary. One of them is

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Speaker 1: out there fighting fires and risking their life, and the

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Speaker 1: other one is running an organization badly. And that is

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Speaker 1: important here because if there was a good track record

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Speaker 1: that we could point to a pay rise of the

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Speaker 1: scale maybe justified or at least, you know, able to

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Speaker 1: be explained. But this is a terribly run organization. These

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Speaker 1: guys have not been able to settle a pay dispute

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Speaker 1: for eighteen months. Fire trucks break down so regularly it

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Speaker 1: is ridiculous and quite scary. Equipment is failing. They've just

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Speaker 1: paid for a bunch of fire trucks that when they

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Speaker 1: arrived into the country were too small to go to

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Speaker 1: rescues because all of the equipment doesn't fit in. They

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Speaker 1: spend five hundred thousand dollars on a chief executive and

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Speaker 1: two point three seven million dollars on seven deputy chief executives.

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Speaker 1: There are calls for a review in defense now because

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Speaker 1: the place is so badly run. Now. I'm always sympathetic

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Speaker 1: to the argument that you need to pay decent rates

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Speaker 1: to attract decent talent to run a place, but that

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Speaker 1: is not what is about to happen here. We're simply

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Speaker 1: going to be increasing the pay of the people who

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Speaker 1: are already running the place quite badly. It is unreal

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Speaker 1: that this is happening. But in a way, this is

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Speaker 1: actually a gift to the striking firefighters, because if they

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Speaker 1: haven't already got enough public support, surely us now seeing

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Speaker 1: what kind of outfit these guys are dealing with will

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Speaker 1: garner some sympathy for their plight. For more from here

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Speaker 1: at the Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live to News Talks

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Speaker 1: it B from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio