I would like to shine some historical light on the evolution of the D&D award in an attempt to explain how it relates to us here during these elections. In particular, the reforms to the retained staff D&D in 2014.
As these reforms occurred during the period of Jim Casey as FBEU State Secretary, it is timely that we clarify some of the details. Warning, It’s a dry topic but try and stay with me.
Without going into deeper politics, I will start this when the D&D Award was created in 2003, after previous governments ripped up the SSS and SAS superannuation schemes, to provide a level of support in retirement that is far superior to anything we have today.
I know because my dad is one of the guys on the old scheme. He owns his house, plays golf 8 days a week, takes holidays whenever he wants and is guaranteed 5/8 of his wage that he retired on at age 60 until he dies. This was a good scheme, but the FBEU fought for members who were put on inferior schemes like the rest of the public sector.
Prior to 2003, retained FFs had no cover at all, they were not incorporated into the SSS or the SAS schemes.
Claims on the D&D scheme ended up out of balance with retained making more claims and contributing much less into the fund, because Permanent FF wage v Retained FF wage are obviously different.
To be clear, full time workers and part time workers making contributions, that were indexed to the income of each group of workers, with claim benefits being equal to both groups of workers, prior to 2014.
Advice was received that had the scheme continued in that format, it was going to collapse. A scheme that was created and included members (Retained Firefighters) that had no cover prior to the D&D scheme being built, would not exist at all today had it continued under that structure. There is much more to this story of course, but this is a brief history of what happened in 2014 and why.
In short, without the D&D, we would all be worse off.
I am very grateful that we have this cover.
I would like to say a very big thankyou to its creators, and in particular former State Secretary Chris Read, for building this scheme and fighting the government at the time as State Secretary, for all of us today.
Dane Wilmott
Candidate for FBEU State Secretary
Wilmott-Casey 24 