Number of volunteer firefighters in Victoria drops below 30,000

Victoria has recorded a huge drop in the number of volunteer firefighters, new figures reveal.

The number of volunteer firefighters in Victoria has dropped significantly. Picture: David Crosling

The number of volunteer firefighters in Victoria has crashed by 20 per cent since the Andrews government came to power and has now fallen below 30,000.

The Productivity Commission’s annual report on government services reveals the Country Fire Authority now has 29,633 volunteer firefighters, down from 32,679 the previous year and 36,823 in 2014-15.

Victoria’s fire services have undergone substantial changes in recent years as paid firefighters were shifted out of the CFA and moved into Fire Rescue Victoria, which replaced the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and made the CFA a volunteer-only agency.

The drain on volunteer numbers was also the subject of close scrutiny amid a bitter and long-running industrial dispute that engulfed the fire services and resulted in the departure of dozens of senior leaders.

There have been major changes to the structure of Victoria’s fire services. Picture: David Geraghty

According to the Productivity Commission’s report, Victorian firefighters improved their performance last year, confining 78.9 per cent of structure fires to the room or object of origin — up from 72.1 per cent the year before, and ranking as the highest mark in a decade.

Statewide, crews responded to half of all structure fires within 6.9 minutes — faster than the fire services in any other state.

The Productivity Commission report also detailed how the pandemic saw a marked reduction in the number of Victorians locked up in prison.

In 2020-21, the daily average of the state’s prison population was 7138, compared to 7949 in 2019-20 and 8044 in 2018-19.

Prisoners spent an average of 10.1 hours out of their cell every day in the last financial year, compared to 11 hours per day prior to the pandemic, with Covid forcing more regular lockdowns to prevent the virus spreading.

Some of the findings of an annual survey of community satisfaction with policing were also revealed in the Productivity Commission report.

It showed that 83.4 per cent of Victorians believed police performed their work professionally, 67.2 per cent thought they treated people fairly and equally, and 69.7 per cent believed that police officers were honest. Those results were all marginally down on stronger support for police identified in previous surveys.

Only one in two Victorians said they felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhood at night, while 23.1 per cent said they felt unsafe and the remainder were unsure or said the question did not apply to them.