I’ve long pushed the government to strengthen firefighter safety and protection and I support any research that reduces firefighters’ exposure to high-risk chemicals and other impacts.

Australia, with Canada, is leading the world in this field.

With our long and often savage exposure to bushfire, we could also lead the world and make sure that those who risk their lives for our communities’ safety can rely on a fair, robust presumptive rights compensation scheme when the worst happens.

I’ve been pressing the state government for almost a year to add female-specific ovarian, uterine and cervical cancers to Victoria’s presumptive rights schedule, which covers diseases acquired because of your job.

The World Health Organisation’s cancer research agency has since reclassified firefighting as carcinogenic to humans.

This comes when the latest data shows about 5000 volunteer and career female firefighters help to protect our communities and yet female-specific reproductive cancers are absent from the current schedule when male reproductive cancers are included.

Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes MP recently said the government’s “working hard to ensure women are encouraged to become firefighters”.

That’s why it puzzles me and many female firefighters that the state’s presumptive rights scheme remains unfair and unequal. The government has the power to change this without delay.

Tania Maxwell MP
Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party
Member for Northern Victoria
Wangaratta

—

Victoria’s presumptive rights schedule 2022