Tom Minear: Why Daniel Andrews must pay to keep CFA strong
If this summer’s Victorian bushfire crisis so far has shown us anything, it’s that we need a strong, properly funded CFA. So it’s high time for Premier Daniel Andrews to open his wallet, writes Tom Minear.
Opinion
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One of Daniel Andrews’ favourite sayings is that his government gives Victoria Police the powers and resources it needs to keep the state safe.
Voters expect nothing less and the Premier has stayed true to his word. Weapons, iPads, body-worn cameras, even a Tesla highway patrol car, the cops have all the tools they need and more.
During this summer’s bushfire crisis, city-dwellers could be forgiven for thinking Andrews applies the same approach to the Country Fire Authority. But the thousands of volunteers putting their lives on the line to protect our regional communities aren’t just giving up their time.
Every year, across the state, CFA volunteers are rattling tins and manning sausage sizzles to raise enough money to maintain their brigades.
If they need to upgrade their station, buy equipment or replace ageing fire trucks, crews must apply for government grants, with the taxpayer delivering $2 for every $1 they raise.
Volunteers often tip in their own money to support their brigades, many of which are based in small towns that are battling, especially in times of drought.
The Herald Sun reported last week that the East Gippsland fires had been a double blow for the Lakes Entrance brigade, which had hoped holiday-makers would help them raise money before the area became a ghost town.
If there has been a silver lining to the bushfire disaster, it has been Victoria’s incredibly generous response to help those in need.
Donations of food and clothing flooded in to charities so quickly that Andrews had to ask for them to stop as warehouses ran out of space. Now, there is another type of donation Andrews must end.
We need the CFA more than ever and it should no longer have to rely on fundraising. When a house is on fire in Brighton or Box Hill or Bundoora, firefighters arrive with all the taxpayer-funded equipment they need to put it out.
Why do people living in Bairnsdale or Benambra or Beechworth deserve anything less?
Resourcing will be an area of focus for the inevitable inquiry that deals with the fallout from this summer’s fires. That will take place as the government prepares for its restructure of the fire services to go live on July 1.
The CFA will become a volunteer-only force, with its paid firefighters transferred into Fire Rescue Victoria, a new agency which absorbs the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.
Establishing FRV will be expensive — new branding, new uniforms and what will surely be a generous new pay deal.
The government has vowed to protect and enhance the CFA and it promised a $100 million package when it first tried to deliver the restructure in 2017.
But some volunteer leaders fear the authority could be left behind, particularly given Labor’s track record on delivering for the United Firefighters Union and its boss Peter Marshall.
Now is not the time to short-change the CFA, a point proven by Andrews himself last week, when he said the bushfires ravaging the state were “the new normal”.
While FRV will take on responsibility for firefighting on Melbourne’s urban fringe, as well as in regional centres like Ballarat and Bendigo, CFA volunteers, with seasonal forest firefighters, will remain the first responders to the kinds of fires currently burning.
If we expect those volunteers to keep fronting up, as the bushfire season gets longer and more dangerous, then the least we can do is ensure they are fully supported.
Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria has put forward sensible changes that the state and federal governments should be considering seriously.
For a start, volunteers spending their own money on their brigades should be able to claim those expenses back in their tax returns — especially given donations to the CFA are already tax-deductible.
Emergency service leave, perhaps supported by government co-payments, is another possibility to ensure volunteers spending weeks on the frontline do not suffer financial stress and their employers can adequately handle their absence.
Those reforms make more sense than the $6000 payments for volunteers thrown on the table by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Given other states have signed up to that offer, Victoria will likely accept something as well, but VFBV chief Adam Barnett has warned that if such handouts become commonplace, “the spirit of volunteerism could be destroyed”.
The brave and tireless work of volunteers this summer shows that spirit is as powerful as ever. But resourcing issues are linked to broader questions about the long-term sustainability of the volunteer model.
Over the past five years, as a bitter industrial dispute has dogged the fire services, the number of operational CFA volunteers has fallen from 38,335 to 34,380.
Many who left were fed up with the government’s backing of the UFU demands.
CFA chief Steve Warrington maintains about 20,000 volunteers have consistently turned out over that period and that the authority’s capability has not been reduced.
It is no secret, however, that the CFA’s age profile is getting older.
Volunteering doesn’t seem to be as ingrained in younger Victorians as it was for their parents and grandparents, an issue compounded by the fact that many leave their rural communities for opportunities in Melbourne.
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That trend cannot be ignored and highlights why the government needs to improve conditions for volunteers to keep the CFA strong.
Warrington was almost bursting with pride last week as he described his volunteers as “the backbone of fire services”.
After the past fortnight, most Victorians would agree and feel that opening their wallets is the least they can do.
Now is the time for Andrews to do the same.
— Tom Minear is state politics editor.