2025 King’s Birthday Honours

Three members of the ACT Emergency Services Agency have been recognised in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, announced by the Governor-General of Australia today.

 

The awards celebrate a variety of accomplishments, but all recipients share common traits - including selflessness, excellence and a commitment to service.

 

The 2025 King's Birthday Honour recipients are: 

 

 

Mr Robert Gore commenced service with the ACT Rural Fire Service (ACTRFS) in 1994. Since that time, he has held a range of operational and administrative roles within the service including deputy captain, captain, group captain, secretary and president. Mr Gore has also actively contributed to the ACT State Emergency Service in the past.  

 

Mr Gore has volunteered for both operational and administrative activities, including hundreds of hours of fire suppression and prevention activities. He has actively participated in and organised field days, cross border exercises and social events.

 

Mr Gore has invested considerable time and energy into developing the ACT’s volunteer firefighters. He has trained and assessed ACTRFS members across a variety of competencies from basic bushfire firefighter to advanced firefighting modules, village firefighter and the crew leader course, which he was instrumental in getting up and running in 2014. He helped drive a working group reviewing the NSW Rural Fire Service Training Resource Kit, whose recommendation led to the ACT adopting that package in 2007. Mr Gore has also spent considerable time mentoring firefighters within the ACT.

 

He has represented the Jerrabomberra Brigade and ACTRFS volunteers on several committees, and on the Fire Controllers Group, providing recommendations to ACTRFS management and improving operations in the ACT. He was also the representative on the Australasian Assembly of Volunteer Brigades, participating in an international emergency services conference in New Zealand. He assisted the Emergency Services Agency legislation review in 2004, as an ACT Volunteer Brigades Association working group member.

 

Mr Gore has made a significant contribution to the safety and wellbeing of the community of Canberra throughout his more than 30-year career, particularly in relation to training and mentoring. Mr Gore has served the organisation and the wider community of Canberra with distinction throughout his career.

 

 

During her 27-year career with the ACT Ambulance Service, Mrs Lisa Deck has consistently demonstrated exceptional clinical and operational leadership in the provision of pre-hospital clinical care to the ACT community. Her career is complemented with a sustained dedication and commitment to patient-centred care and clinical excellence, both operationally and in supporting roles. As a training and development officer, Mrs Deck has supported the clinical development and proficiency of newer members of the ACT Ambulance Service, whilst maintaining her own operational capacity. In doing so, she has supported the enhancement of the pre-hospital clinical services provided to the ACT community.  

 

Mrs Deck has played a key role in the development and implementation of a new roster initiative for the ACT Ambulance Service. This transformational change promotes better fatigue management, quarantines time for paramedics to hone and perfect their clinical skills, supports professional registration requirements for paramedics and organisational accreditation goals, and, more broadly, improves welfare outcomes for paramedics within the ACT.

 

The implementation of a secondary triage system was a key initiative to support an improved patient experience and clinical outcomes for those coming into the care of the ACT Ambulance Service. Mrs Deck has played a key role in the operationalisation of this system and its introduction within the ACT Emergency Services Agency Communications Centre.

 

Mrs Deck is a respected leader within the ACT Ambulance Service. She has been a consummate professional, committed to the highest ethical and professional standards expected of a paramedic.

 

Her personal values and behaviours reflect a collaborative and humble leader, and she is a female role model for all members of the ACT Ambulance Service. Mrs Deck is driven to deliver high quality patient-centred care in every role she has fulfilled and actively seeks opportunities to improve the pre-hospital emergency services available to the ACT community.

 

 

Ms Julia Rozycka joined the Pialligo unit of the ACT State Emergency Service (ACTSES) in 2009, becoming the unit commander in 2017, a position she holds to the present day. Despite a heavy full-time workload, she contributes significantly to the ACTSES and, in recent years, has played major roles in the ACTSES responses to significant events, such as the 2019-2020 bushfires, the 2020 hailstorm and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic response. In addition, as unit commander, she spends many hours every week managing the unit and supporting its volunteers. Her commitment to the ACT community is beyond question. 

 

In her 15 years of service, Ms Rozycka has participated in a wide range of emergencies such as floods, storms, fires and missing person searches. One of the most unusual and significant events, however, was the response to COVID-19. Even though the response was managed by the ACT Department of Health, Ms Rozycka’s emergency service skills were highly relevant. She volunteered for about 20 days, working in a wide range of areas covering both incident management and frontline activities, including packaging and delivering food for vulnerable ACT communities through the Canberra Relief Network.

 

The Canberra bushfires of 2019-2020 are another example of an emergency where Ms Rozycka’s wide-ranging skills proved valuable. She contributed about three weeks of volunteering during this event, much of the time working in the background providing logistics support, removing the many minor impediments which would otherwise have prevented the Rural Fire Service crews from spending their time actually fighting the fires. Ms Rozycka’s 15 years of volunteer service demonstrates an outstanding level of dedication to the ACTSES and the ACT community. Her leadership and commitment mean that she is highly regarded by ACTSES staff and volunteers ,and she has directly contributed to the development of the ACTSES into the professional organisation it is today.