The chief of the state’s Country Fire Service has confirmed he’s put his hand up for the top job in a restructured emergency services regime that will oversee South Australia’s emergency services and metropolitan and country fire operations.

CFS chief officer Greg Nettleton today fronted the first sitting of a newly-formed parliamentary committee convened to probe Labor’s plans to align the state’s emergency services under one umbrella.

Nettleton maintained that the current incident management system was best practice and utilized across Australia, arguing that seamless co-ordination across agencies in the recent Sampson Flat bushfires reinforced that “you don’t need to come from the same organisation or department to make this structure work”.

He said he had flagged concerns, subsequently privately assuaged by Emergency Services Minister Tony Piccolo, about the appointment of a new Emergency Services Commissioner, who was to replace chief officers in the three individual agencies – SES, MFS and CFS.

Piccolo conceded in February that those chief officer positions now “will be retained to provide leadership in the operational stream of those three services”.

Nettleton revealed his concern that “if the commissioner comes from another country (and) uses a totally different system, (the existing system) would be made redundant”.

“That will make us incompatible with the other services in Australia,” he said.

However, he revealed he “had discussions with the minister”, who “made a commitment that the (existing) method will remain in whatever the new structure might be”.

Specifics of the reforms are still vague, but Nettleton revealed he had applied for the new senior position.

“What the new piece of legislation looks like I can’t comment on … it’s not finalized yet so it’s a bit hard for me to comment on what impact that might have in the future,” he said.

Asked whether he believed the proposed model would deliver budget savings – which would be returned to the individual agencies – Nettleton said the sector was already “very lean”.

“I don’t know what the quantums of savings will be but certainly the margins we work on now are very tight,” he said.