Compensation for volunteer firefighters is expected to cost the federal budget $50m and will be offered to all state and territory governments that request assistance, Scott Morrison has said.
The prime minister announced overnight that eligible volunteers would receive $300 a day, up to $6,000 in total, if called out for more than 10 days this fire season. The payments apply only to volunteers with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.
The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, earlier criticised the federal government for restricting the payment to volunteers from NSW, saying it needed “a national approach”.
But Morrison said he expected that other states and territories would also request help with volunteer compensation and would be offered access to the same scheme.
“The reason we’re making this decision now is because it was beginning to impact on the RFS’s efforts to fight fires,” Morrison said. “This isn’t … about paying volunteers. That’s a different issue. What this is about is resourcing a firefighting effort, to ensure that the commissioner is in the best place possible to be able to do those call-outs.”
Morrison said he expected the scheme would cost $50m but that it was uncapped. “It could end up costing less than that, it could end up costing more than that,” he said.
The first $10m will be made available to NSW next month.
The payments will be backdated to 1 July and applied retrospectively to firefighters who have already worked more than 10 volunteer days. Morrison said he had already spoken to the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, about making them available in her state.
The payments were announced days after the Coalition frontbencher Darren Chester, whose electorate of Gippsland is under threat from out-of-control bushfires, broke ranks and joined Labor in calling for payment for volunteers.
Morrison and the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian said on Sunday the payments were compensation for loss of income, to ensure that volunteers did not “go backward” as a result of volunteering their time.
Those who have access to emergency leave from their employer – such as public servants – are not eligible.
Morrison said the focus was on self-employed people and those working for small and medium-sized employers. He said the maximum $6,000 payment equated to about 20 days emergency leave.
Responding to questions about how long it had taken to set up the payments, Morrison said it was “very important in any disaster situation that you don’t run the government by Twitter, you don’t set up programs by Facebook”.
The NSW fire commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, said the payments would “provide comfort” to volunteers by offering “a security net to ensure that volunteers are not disadvantaged or going through loss of income”.
Fitzsimmons said he would be “disappointed” if any RFS volunteer had been fighting fires for 150 days, saying crews were rotated on and off.
Volunteers from South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania have travelled to the Blue Mountains and north coast of NSW to assist local firefighters.
As of Sunday there were 85 fires burning in NSW, 40 of which remained uncontrolled.
The 15,000-hectare Grose Valley fire, which split off from the 500,000-hectare Gospers Mountain megafire, was declared contained on Sunday.
NSW RFS
(@NSWRFS)In some early morning good news. Due to the extraordinary work done by crews over the Christmas period the Grose Valley Fire has been listed as contained. Crews will continue to monitor containment lines over the coming days and mop up and black out any hotspots #NSWRFS #nswfires pic.twitter.com/T0WyeGn3dw
A watch and act warning was issued for an out of control bushfire in East Gippsland, 13km west of Goongerah, at 10am on Sunday, downgraded from an emergency warning. The 33,000-hectare fire is threatening Bonang, Cabanandra, Deddick Valley, Dellicknora, Tubbut and Amboyne. An evacuation warning for Goongerah was issued on Saturday night.
There are three fires burning out of control in Gippsland, covering an area of about 130,000 hectares.
The Gippsland fires are being managed by Forest Fire Management Victoria, which is not a volunteer service. But Emergency Victoria said that in recent days an extra 300 Country Fire Authority volunteers and 65 trucks had been called up around the state.
In Western Australia, a watch and act warning was issued for a bushfire burning in the Stirling Range national park, south-east of Perth, just before 6am on Sunday. It was downgraded from an emergency warning issued on Saturday night.
The blaze has already burnt through more than 10,000 hectares of scrub after being started by a lightning strike on Boxing Day. About 20 Parks and Wildlife Service firefighters were working to strengthen containment lines.
Two fires — the Cudlee Creek fire in the Adelaide Hills and one on the northern side of Kangaroo Island — remain at advice level in South Australia. Those fires began in catastrophic fire conditions on 20 December and burned through 47,000 hectares, killing one person and destroying 86 homes.
