Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Country Fire Authority funding

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:39): (1365) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Emergency Services. The action I seek is for the state government to properly fund the CFA to enable it to continue to provide its vital work throughout the state by including more money in the budget and also providing an upgrade on the many resources that it needs, which are completely out of date. The analysis of the CFA’s financial statements over recent years reveals how the city-centric state government has slashed the CFA’s funding and put the organisation and volunteers under extreme financial pressure. Under total income to the CFA, government grants were $807 million in 2019–20. It dropped significantly to $351 million in 2020–21, $347 million in 2021–22, $341 million in 2022–23 and just $339 million in 2023–24. So it keeps dropping.

This is a cut of $468 million, almost 60 per cent of the CFA’s grant income. This raises the big question: why is this government effectively defunding the CFA? In fact just recently people have heard firefighters grumbling while they are waiting to order their lunches about how their trucks are over 15 years old. How is that safe? How is that fair on any Victorian, let alone the CFA firefighters? Sadly for all Victorians, the answer to this question is clear: the government would rather fund a card-carrying union member than a volunteer. It is clear that this government is intent on getting rid of CFA volunteers and replacing them with unionised FRV members. In addition to this extraordinary reduction in funding, the fleet of CFA vehicles is dramatically ageing. As I said, it has been known that we have trucks out there that are more than 15 years old, and this is putting the lives of the CFA volunteers at risk, with unreliable, and in some cases unsafe, vehicles still being used. I have seen them, I have been in them, and I know that you can sit outside in some of these CFA trucks – and they are supposed to be ones for bushfire relief. They are completely outdated. This is outrageous.

Further analysis of the CFA financial statements shows that this government is taking additional amounts of the CFA’s budget disguised as contributions towards other so-called costs or equipment. These amounts have also risen dramatically from $10 million in 2013–14 to $46 million in 2023–24 and $67 million in 2024–25. So you are not only giving them less but bleeding their money as well for other uses. Information obtained by Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria under an FOI revealed that despite government assurances these amounts taken were to be used for CFA equipment, the reality is that some of this money was used to prop up the budgets of other state government agencies, such as Emergency Management Victoria. This just shows once again that Labor cannot manage money.