That’s not really how it works in Australia though.
Every property owner pays an Emergency Services Levy which pays for the fireys. State governments pay for the police force. So there’s no organisation that chooses whether police or fire gets whatever money - funding is procured separately.
That said, I take your point that the fireys don’t get a lot of attention until there’s a disaster. That’s just human nature I guess.
In my area, if there’s a bushfire that looks like destroying someone’s house, the volunteers, fire service, and bombing planes are on to it in minutes.
I don’t have “data” but from my anecdotal observations they don’t seem to be hamstrung by a lack of funding.
I suspect Scott being a doomsday death cult evangelical made those cuts deliberate instead of just being a standard short sighted git. Especially when he decided to take a vacation during your crises.
That’s karma. The longer we seek instant gratification, neglecting doing the hard, dirty necessary work that yields no immediate discernable benefits, the more severe the bite is, when it comes back around and bites us in the backside. As a collective, we stay on the wheel of suffering, figure out we need to do something differently, figure out necessary changes, then implement them… Then a few generations, the wealthy overlords convince us we’re spending too much on very sensible investments that yield no immediate discernable benefits and we repeat the cycle. It’s like Groundhog Day over centuries (which add up to millennia,), rather than days, weeks, years. Because they plan family fortunes for centuries, rather than days, weeks and years, because they can afford private communities, with private police and fire departments, and comprehensive health. The rest of us are means that justify their ends, and the sooner we, as a collective, wake up and smell the roses and love each other enough (which preserves our own arses) to figure out ways to fix this mess, for centuries that turn into millennia, the better off we and the rest of our ecoweb will be. Or not. 🤷♀️
Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important… until it is.
Can confirm. source: Am Australian.
That’s not really how it works in Australia though.
Every property owner pays an Emergency Services Levy which pays for the fireys. State governments pay for the police force. So there’s no organisation that chooses whether police or fire gets whatever money - funding is procured separately.
That said, I take your point that the fireys don’t get a lot of attention until there’s a disaster. That’s just human nature I guess.
In my area, if there’s a bushfire that looks like destroying someone’s house, the volunteers, fire service, and bombing planes are on to it in minutes.
I don’t have “data” but from my anecdotal observations they don’t seem to be hamstrung by a lack of funding.
I suspect Scott being a doomsday death cult evangelical made those cuts deliberate instead of just being a standard short sighted git. Especially when he decided to take a vacation during your crises.
That’s karma. The longer we seek instant gratification, neglecting doing the hard, dirty necessary work that yields no immediate discernable benefits, the more severe the bite is, when it comes back around and bites us in the backside. As a collective, we stay on the wheel of suffering, figure out we need to do something differently, figure out necessary changes, then implement them… Then a few generations, the wealthy overlords convince us we’re spending too much on very sensible investments that yield no immediate discernable benefits and we repeat the cycle. It’s like Groundhog Day over centuries (which add up to millennia,), rather than days, weeks, years. Because they plan family fortunes for centuries, rather than days, weeks and years, because they can afford private communities, with private police and fire departments, and comprehensive health. The rest of us are means that justify their ends, and the sooner we, as a collective, wake up and smell the roses and love each other enough (which preserves our own arses) to figure out ways to fix this mess, for centuries that turn into millennia, the better off we and the rest of our ecoweb will be. Or not. 🤷♀️