Episode 8: Carlene York APM, Retired Commissioner, NSW State Emergency Service

I just wanted to start off with a first question that's fairly easy.

When you look back on your five years leading the SES, is there a moment, big or small, that captures the essence of what that role meant to you? I think...

One of the, there's lots of moments, if I could say that, throughout the five years and lots of challenges and really lots of rewards.

Going to the townships that have been affected by floods would be, you know, the thing that I remember the most to meet with the community who were rebuilding their communities and to see the damage done.

But also to meet with those volunteers that had worked, depending whether it was Yugara floods, Forbes, Northern Rivers, Hawkesbury, there's many to name.

But those volunteers, you know, are part of the community as well.

And to have the community really understand what the state emergency service is there for and what they've done, I think that, so not one moment, but, you know, continually reassured, I suppose, that the volunteers were there made me very proud of the organisation.

Yeah, definitely.

It sort of brings that huge reality when you meet people face-to-face.

And I guess for a lot of us, we're there when the action's happening.

We don't always get there after the event and to see that.

So in those early months, stepping into that commissioner role, what did you learn about yourself? Because as I talked about, you're in the police force for quite a while.

So you're dealing predominantly in a different space.

And then when you became commissioner, you then were dealing with a volunteer workforce.

How did you find that transition?

Yeah, it's quite different to work for a volunteer workforce.

There's comfort when you're in the police that you can go and look at a roster and see who's rostered on and see who's available and what they're doing.

You know, whether there's a car crew or intelligence or detectives, you know who's on that shift.

It was a real shock then to go to the SES where they don't have a roster.

People would say, how many volunteers are available today? Honestly, you can't answer the question.

You have an estimate of numbers, but it depends on, are they working today? Are they not well today? Or would they come out anyway if there's an emergency, even if they're not rostered on? So that was a little bit daunting, I suppose, because I didn't have that comfort of knowing that I had a team, a number in the team that was available.

And the other thing that struck me was quite different was there's no line of command for volunteers.

So I was getting emails from volunteers when I first started as commissioner.

And I thought, well, if I was the commissioner of police, there's no way that the constables would be emailing me as much with suggestions of how I could improve the organisation, what was good about it and things like that.

So I had to get a little bit used to being there for the volunteers at every level and very different to the command and control structure in policing.

I just wanted to start off with a first question that's fairly easy.

When you look back on your five years leading the SES, is there a moment, big or small, that captures the essence of what that role meant to you? I think...

One of the, there's lots of moments, if I could say that, throughout the five years and lots of challenges and really lots of rewards.

Going to the townships that have been affected by floods would be, you know, the thing that I remember the most to meet with the community who were rebuilding their communities and to see the damage done.

But also to meet with those volunteers that had worked, depending whether it was Yugara floods, Forbes, Northern Rivers, Hawkesbury, there's many to name.

But those volunteers, you know, are part of the community as well.

And to have the community really understand what the state emergency service is there for and what they've done, I think that, so not one moment, but, you know, continually reassured, I suppose, that the volunteers were there made me very proud of the organisation.

Yeah, definitely.

It sort of brings that huge reality when you meet people face-to-face.

And I guess for a lot of us, we're there when the action's happening.

We don't always get there after the event and to see that.

So in those early months, stepping into that commissioner role, what did you learn about yourself? Because as I talked about, you're in the police force for quite a while.

So you're dealing predominantly in a different space.

And then when you became commissioner, you then were dealing with a volunteer workforce.

How did you find that transition?

Yeah, it's quite different to work for a volunteer workforce.

There's comfort when you're in the police that you can go and look at a roster and see who's rostered on and see who's available and what they're doing.

You know, whether there's a car crew or intelligence or detectives, you know who's on that shift.

It was a real shock then to go to the SES where they don't have a roster.

People would say, how many volunteers are available today? Honestly, you can't answer the question.

You have an estimate of numbers, but it depends on, are they working today? Are they not well today? Or would they come out anyway if there's an emergency, even if they're not rostered on? So that was a little bit daunting, I suppose, because I didn't have that comfort of knowing that I had a team, a number in the team that was available.

And the other thing that struck me was quite different was there's no line of command for volunteers.

So I was getting emails from volunteers when I first started as commissioner.

And I thought, well, if I was the commissioner of police, there's no way that the constables would be emailing me as much with suggestions of how I could improve the organisation, what was good about it and things like that.

So I had to get a little bit used to being there for the volunteers at every level and very different to the command and control structure in policing.