Fire Services Victoria rife with gender inequality, fail to meet key performance targets

One year after Fire Services Victoria was created under sweeping reforms, cracks are starting to emerge including these striking problems.

Victoria’s fire services are failing to meet key performance indicators, including a gender target to increase the number of female firefighters.

A year after sweeping reforms merged CFA career staff with the MFB to form the state’s new service — Fire Rescue Victoria — the latest fire services progress report has found both organisations are falling short of hitting key targets across areas of community engagement, service delivery, community safety and workplace safety.

And despite an increase in female participation across the organisations, it has been conceded a 2018 start government target to reach 400 female firefighters by 2021 will not be met.

Sources say the recent United Firefighters Union elections, that saw the only woman nominated receive just 44 votes, highlights a gender problem within the services.

A report into Fire Services Victoria has found it will not meet key performance indicators. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Just 164 of FRV’s 3500 firefighters are women, including a Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Chief Fire Officer, with two female support officers now employed to help boost the number of female career firefighters.

The progress report found FRV failed to meet community engagement targets, and was also below target for operational fleet availability.

A number of key performance measures have now not been tracked for more than six months. They include a breakdown of calls attended and response times with FRV blaming technical issues for not being able to collect the data.

In the CFA, the quarterly report by Fire Services Implementation Monitor Niall Blair, found the organisation failed to meet both community engagement and operational targets.

While the average time to contain and control bushfires decreased, as did the time spent fighting structure fires, the organisation failed to meet a target of decreasing fire related injuries and deaths.

UFU Victoria Secretary Peter Marshall. Picture: Mark Stewart

A target to decrease workplace injuries was also not met.

Mr Blair said with only three quarterly reports completed to date, it was too early to make any definitive statements on the progress of the controversial fire services reform.

A government spokesman said gender diversity was being prioritised in both the CFA and FRV.

“We’ve set ambitious targets for our fire services to increase women’s participation, and both the CFA and FRV are prioritising gender diversity in the workplace,” she said.

“Women are now represented at every operational rank from Recruit Firefighter up to Deputy Commissioner, providing visible evidence of the opportunity for females to progress through the operational ranks.”

The spokesman said technical issues reported by FRV had been resolved and had not impacted service delivery.

“The organisation is currently undertaking validation of its data to ensure it can report fully into the next quarterly Fire Services Implementation Monitor report,” she said.

Opposition emergency services spokesman Tim smith slammed the report.

“The Andrews Labor government’s so called reforms to our state’s fire services may have pleased a few union thugs but they have not made Victorians any safer from fire,” he said.

“The Andrews government has also refused to release a crucial human rights commission

report into workplace safety for women in our fire services, no wonder Labor is missing their gender equity targets.”

Originally published as Fire Services Victoria rife with gender inequality, fail to meet key performance targets