Comedian Celeste Barber says the millions of dollars she raised for Australian bushfire relief and fire-hit communities should have been funnelled to its intended recipients rather than solely to the NSW Rural Fire Service as listed in her online appeal.
But Rural Fire Service Association president Brian McDonough says the $51.3 million raised by Barber should continue to sit with the trustees as ruled by the NSW Supreme Court in May.
Last month's proposed change to the laws surrounding the RFS Donations Trust was on Thursday explored by a NSW upper house committee.
Barber provided an online submission to the committee after the court ruled that funds from her Facebook charity drive - with the NSW RFS as her nominated beneficiary - could not be redirected to interstate charities or fire-hit communities.
That had been Barber's original intention and the presumed motivation of her donors.
"My concern is that if it is not possible to help these people have their money allocated to where they want it to go in this unprecedented instance that this may be the last we see of such generosity on such an international scale," Barber said.
Barber in her submission said her initial goal for the fundraising drive was $30,000, which rapidly grew to $10 million and beyond due to her online following.
She said she was subsequently advised to open other fundraising pages so money could go to groups other than the NSW RFS, but did not do so.
"I didn't know what to do as I feared that if I closed this particular fundraiser down and started another one the momentum might have been lost," Barber said.
Mr McDonough told the inquiry the RFS Trust Fund received in excess of $100 million in donations over the bushfire season, which will be used to purchase firefighting equipment and improve "network connectivity" in vehicles and stations.
He said $90 million of this funding has already been committed and expected all donations would be allocated by the end of the year. He added that RFS volunteers would have "simply gone without" if they had not received funding.
"After these funds are injected we're still going to have 30-year-old trucks in the fleet so we still don't have enough money to do what we need to do," Mr McDonough said.
The committee emphasised a need for mental health training and support for RFS volunteers, including for families who lost loved ones during the 2019-20 bushfire crisis.
Mr McDonough said the challenge for his organisation - and he assumed for the RFS Trust Fund - had been ensuring funds were distributed through the "right means".
The inquiry also heard from Volunteer Fire Fighters Association vice president Brian Williams who suggested a benevolent fund should be established from Barber's fundraising efforts to ensure volunteers could access immediate support.
Mr Williams also said "money is not the answer to the problem," emphasising the need for a focus on preventative fire measures across NSW and Australia.
"If you look back over the past 10 years, the bigger the RFS budget has grown, the bigger the fires have become so the money we're giving is not being spent wisely," he said.
"The system is broken ... and the way to fix it is to reduce the intensity of the fires we have.
"That money that was given does pass the pub test in our view."
The committee will report back by the end of July.
Australian Associated Press
