
Last December the state government announced increases to the compulsory fire service levy and the increases are hefty – close to a 100% increase for homeowners, big rises for businesses and a 169% increase for farmers. The levy is collected by local councils and passed on in full to the state government. The levy is collected annually to help fund fire fighting services.
Darren Wallace is a thirty year CFA veteran and is also the state councillor for this district to the body representing CFA volunteers; Volunteer Fire Brigades of Victoria (VFBV).
The state will collect an extra $168 million dollars this year and Wallace and his colleagues believe $60 million of that needs to go each year to replacing the CFA’s ageing fleet of vehicles.
Tankers are the workhorses of the CFA and 227 in the state’s fleet are more than 31 years old. Another 212 are in the 26 to 30 year range. The government is offering $30 million a year, for four years, for replacement vehicles, but Wallace argues that buys only sixty trucks (at $500,000 each) and at the end of the four year period the oldest trucks will have been replaced, but the 212 trucks in the 26 to 30 year old range will then be 30 years and more old. In Wallace’s view that achieves little.
He is not alone in that view. Adam Barnett, CEO of VFBV had this to say.
“The government is actually defunding CFA and investing less and less. That is like reducing your insurance as the rate of theft increases. In the most fire-prone place on earth – it is just madness.
“Further analysis has revealed the tens of millions of dollars being siphoned from CFA’s budget to be diverted to public service bodies and departments.”
Section 76 of the CFA Act stipulates that government contributions to the CFA are 22.5% from general revenue and 77.5% from the fire services property levy. If that formula applied to the increased funds raised from the levy, the CFA would receive an additional $129 million, but that is not the case.
Wallace remembers when a truck was considered old and ready for replacement at twenty years of age. That was lifted to twenty five about fifteen years ago and now there is no upper limit. But vehicles wear out and more than nine hundred of the state CFA’s tankers are twenty years and older.
A lot of extra money will be collected through the levy this year and Wallace and the CFA volunteers want $60 million of that per year to go toward vehicle replacement, arguing that the $30 million being offered won’t solve the problem.
Trafalgar CFA has one old tanker and it is a single cab appliance which means up to three firefighters have to ride on the back of the truck facing imminent danger. Coming home around midnight from a recent fire at Narracan, the volunteers on the back of the truck were freezing; and that was in summer. More than seven hundred tankers in the CFA fleet are single cab appliances so hundreds of volunteers are exposed to danger and severe weather every time they go out to serve.
CFA volunteers give up their time and safety and comfort to fight fires for their communities and frankly they deserve the best equipment available to keep them safe and effective
Wallace also added that the Trafalgar tanker is two wheel drive which is almost useless once off the bitumen and that puts firefighters at even more risk.
The Trafalgar brigade also has a pumper truck and a general purpose vehicle for which much of the funding for that comes from a generous public.