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Wattie Watson: Professional Firefighters' Union National Secretary calling for a clear-out of the FENZ board · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Bit of an emergency, a siren sounding at fire and emergency.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The minister responsible is Brooke Van Velden.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I have no confidence in the chief executive because he
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: withheld information from me for a full year on a
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: matter of a seriously significant incident. And that matter is
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: now being referred to the serious fraud office.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Now, there was a leaked report that showed a bit
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of a cock-up of buying fire trucks, but Brooks says
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: this is a completely separate issue to that one, so
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a bit of a mystery. Wadi Watson is the Professional
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Firefighters Union with us this morning. Wadi, good morning.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Do you know what this is about?
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: No, we don't know what the actual matter is that's
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: been referred to the Serious Fraud Office, but we have
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: been trying to get the attention of the Minister now
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: for a couple of years now, on the dire state
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: in Fens and a whole range of issues, including the
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: parliamentary report that came out, which was damning of the management,
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: not just about the state of the fleet.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The fleet, some of which are just sitting there, hasn't
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: been touched since it was bought.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's 30 trucks that were bought that sat out
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: in the weather. for a few years. Then those chassis
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: got sent back to England, got built into trucks. They
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: arrived late last year. SENS failed to have any type
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: of proper acceptance process or whatever. They forced the trucks
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: too early onto stations for training on them. There were
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: some significant failures on those trucks, some safety failures, issues
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: with pumps, which is that pump the water Through the
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: hoses for the firefighters, there were bits falling off, and
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: all those faults were logged by the firefighters. We then
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: threatened not to use those trucks at all until FENS
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: did something about the safety issues. So they've been back
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: in the process to fix those safety issues, and they're
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: still yet to get on station.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So Kerry Gregory, this chief executive, I'm told out of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the country at the moment, apparently the world fire Congress
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and then taking long planned leave. What do you think
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: should happen with Kerry?
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Well, Kerry's often on leave. He needs to go, even
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: without the serious fraud office issue. But clearly with the
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: minister now, saying that she has no confidence he can't
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: stay there. The board can't stay there. They were sleepwalking
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: throughout all this drama, wastage of money, excessive wastage of
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: money and the absolute failures. In addition, we've got the
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Deputy National Commander, Megan Stifler, who was unable to provide
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: accurate information about to the committee, and the most shocking
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: part of that was she was talking about operational matters
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: where she had absolutely no idea, and that's been proven
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: to be the case. She lied and said there were
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: procedures to back up what she was saying, which is rubbish.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Roddy, it sounds to me you want to clean out.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: You want to clean out. Roddy Watson, the Professional Firefighter's
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: National Secretary. Nice to have you on the show this morning.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 3:20
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• 3:23
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