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Deployment of Personnel between Agencies

The National Plan to Combat Pollution of the Sea by Oil and Other Noxious and Hazardous Substances

Purpose

The National Plan establishes a co-operative arrangement between all States, Northern Territory and the Commonwealth for responding to marine pollution incidents.

The statutory or combat agency may require access to staff from other agencies to effectively deal with a marine pollution incident.

These guidelines are to be considered in such circumstances where access to interstate personnel are required. They reflect the collaborative nature of the National Plan through the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA).

Scope

This guideline advises agencies of the procedure for requesting interstate personnel, and for the cost recovery of expenses incurred when providing personnel in response to a National Plan marine pollution incident.

Policy

Commonwealth, States and Northern Territory Ministers signed the IGA in May 2002. The IGA provides administrative and funding protocols in the Administrative Arrangements at paragraphs 23-28. This guideline implements these Arrangements.

Procedure

During a National Plan incident the combat agency can request personnel from other agencies to become part of the Incident Management Team (IMT) or the incident response team.
Such personnel will be selected from the National Response Team or the National Support Team, unless special circumstances exist.
Requests for interstate personnel should be made initially through the Environment Protection Response Duty Officer via the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) on 02 6230 6811 or 1800 641 792 and with a written request to:

Manager
Environment Protection Response
Emergency Response Division
Australian Maritime Safety Authority
GPO Box 2181
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Fax: 02 6279 5076

Personnel will remain in the employ of their own agency, and all entitlements in relation to their contract of employment remain unchanged.
The individual's employer will initially meet all costs. Costs include salary, travel, accommodation, incidental expenditure, and where appropriate overtime expenses.
The loaning agency will recover such costs by forwarding deployment cost summaries to the borrowing agency (or to AMSA as coordinator of the NRT) for cost recovery purposes. For a copy of the Cost Recovery guidelines click here.

For further information contact Environment Protection

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last updated: 7 March 2005