As predicted in SITREP 26, the Department issued the following email on Monday 31 July inviting SF members to submit operational questions for the LF Program selection test:
The Leading Firefighter operational knowledge test has been in progress for the last couple of years. Following discussions with the FBEU, a proposal was developed which expands the question bank. The proposal reviews the questions and ensures they are relevant to the role of a Leading Firefighter and the knowledge level of a Senior Firefighter which includes input from Senior Firefighters.
For the next 2 weeks, concluding on Monday 14th August 2017, Senior Firefighters are invited to submit Operational Knowledge questions to the following email SF_questionbank@fire.nsw.gov.au. The questions should be relevant to the role of a Senior Firefighter and be sourced from current FRNSW policies, procedures and guidelines.
Your proposed questions should include;
The question
Your answer
The Reference for the question and answer
All questions submissions will be reviewed for possible inclusion in the LF question bank. Professional Development will format all accepted questions into multiple choice formats, ‘missing word/s’ or other exam format.
The point of the exercise is not to make the operational test either easier or harder, but simply to make the question bank larger. It might become easier, and it might become more difficult, but that is up to the SF membership. Perhaps the most likely outcome will be that members submit both easy and difficult questions, and that the overall test difficulty will therefore remain largely unchanged, but all members should welcome the fact that this is now up to us for a change rather than the boss.
We encourage SF members who have no yet done so to use the 10 days left to submit your questions.
Berejiklian’s FESL fail costs $25 milllion
For members who missed it last week, the Sydney Morning Herald of 27 July reported that documents obtained under freedom of information laws had revealed that “more than $25 million was spent on a new property levy to fund the fire and emergency services that Premier Gladys Berkejiklian deferred indefinitely and may dump altogether after an outcry over how much owners were set to pay”. $25 million! That‘s the equivalent of a full 15 years worth of the $1.6 million p.a. savings that the same Government is still attempting to squeeze out of retained wage cuts through the RBRP (negotiations on which continue). The Opposition’s Shadow Treasurer Ryan Park was quoted at the time as asking “how can the community trust a government which stuffed the levy up – then put it on hold ‘indefinitely’ after squandering more than $25 million?” How indeed.
Leighton Drury
State Secretary
For a printable copy of this SITREP, please click here.
