Welcome to our POLICY HUB

Politics is the theatre of ‘policy making’. Asking nurses to attend a rally therefore is policy failure. Either the organisation that supports nurses has failed OR the political environment has failed. Either way, it’s failure.

Observers assume that political leaders single handedly design and implement policy. They somewhat do, but ultimately they don’t.

At First Line Responders Australia, we sit outside the political circus and all the cosy relationships. We do so because once you become ‘captured’ it’s almost impossible to escape and most modern peak industry groups are without question, captured.

Our goal is to represent our members: not our buddies we play golf with. We make sense of it all for you not by kicking and screaming, but by analysing the policy cycle and working closely with decision makers to deliver an outcome.

We challenge the thinking of key actors on important issues and yes we use the 4th estate - the media - when needed to prosecute our case. But remember this: we are fiercely independent. Our approach is empirically driven and does not involve attacking political parties or individual politicians. Our primary focus is on presenting the facts and thoroughly examining the reasons why innovative policies are seriously lacking.

Most importantly, we strive to simplify complex issues thereby making them easier to understand for members. We also leave the ‘rats and mice’ stuff - what we call small ‘p’ policy - up to existing groups. We focus predominately on macro big ‘p’ policy.

In essence, we are unique. But let’s be honest: the old school way of doing things has and is failing. A majority agree:

it’s time for reform.

Key issues at the moment

Time to fully protect WA Police from civil / criminal litigation

We are working with our members, senior politicians and policy makers to design legislative changes that finally protect ALL WA police officers from litigation for simply performing their duties and serving the public.

Key elements:

  1. Other jurisdictions ensure police are clearly immune from litigation and so any action taken is taken against the State.

  2. The sole responsibility to protect police officers should sit with their employer.

  3. Police officers should NOT be placed in a position where they need to join an organisation in order to seek legal advice and support.

  4. We’ve designed a model - which is currently being peer reviewed - that redefines Agency roles, time frames to bring a civil claim etc.

We can do SO MUCH better for volunteers

Some State Emergency Services (SES) in Australia have a budget in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

In some States the Emergency Services Levy (ESL) is accumulated from land-owners by local government and yet zero of that money heads to police or ambulance services, yet alone volunteers.

We’ve done the numbers and read critical reviews by the likes of State Auditor Generals who have raised real concerns with the top heavy nature of budgets and the lack of support given to hard-working volunteers.

We believe we can do better as a community. Glossy certificates and new pumps are awesome, but it’s not enough.

Volunteers who place their lives on the line, leave families and their employment deserve to be treated better and we intend to make that happen.