Our Ranks

Radio Rescue Emergency Communications Incorporated (RREC) is a volunteer organisation, however to help the emergency services and other mutual aid groups easily understand who’s who in the zoo we’ve adopted some titles that should be familiar to all emergency workers. While this isn’t important during day-to-day routine activities, during any major emergency quick identification of senior members, and which members may be more senior, could be vital. This is the reasoning behind our rank titles and the rank epaulettes uniformed officers will display.

If your concern is with the use of a crown on the rank slides please click here to go to an explanation behind this and why it is perfectly legal.

Our use of the crown

Some have expressed concern over our use of a “royal crown” on our epaulettes, and have questioned if we have the authority to use this. The short answer is yes, we do. The longer answer explains why.

The crown we use is NOT the same crown used by our military or emergency services. It is not in fact any crown used by the Commonwealth or the British Royal Family. The crown used by police, fire, ambulance and military is St Edward’s Crown, and this is the design (or anything that can be easily mistaken for this design) that is restricted under Commonwealth copyright. To use St Edward’s Crown you first need approval by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) who, on behalf of the Monarch, grant authority for its use.

The crown RREC use is not this crown nor is it a design similar to, or easily mistaken for, St Edward’s crown. This has been confirmed with the DPMC. This means the use of this crown by RREC and other organisations (we are not the only one) is legal and is a way for us to help emergency services and other aid groups understand our rank structure compared with their own, and other services.

St Edward’s crown, as used by Australian Federal and State/Territory Government agencies.	Crown used by RREC, and some other similar organisations (e.g. CREST).