Four experts paid $2600 a day for advice on fire services restructure

THE four people Premier Daniel Andrews hand-picked to advise on Victoria’s fire services were each paid $2600 a day.

Premier Daniel Andrews hand-picked four experts.

THE four people Premier Daniel Andrews hand-picked to advise on Victoria’s fire services were each paid $2600 a day.

Documents released on Monday night by State Parliament show letters of offer in February to former chief of Fire and Rescue NSW Greg Mullins, former federal Labor leader Simon Crean, former department of environment chief officer Ewan Waller and former Department of Justice secretary Penny Armytage.

The panel was set up to “provide expert governance, operational and industrial relations advice” until year’s end, but it is unclear how many days members have worked.

The State Opposition’s Brad Battin said Mr Andrews was “using taxpayers as an ATM to fix a political problem that’s entirely his fault”.

But Emergency Services Minister James Merlino said that experts like Mr Mullins were needed to “work with our operational leaders to ensure we get the best outcome for Victorians”.

Under the government’s proposed fire services restructure, the Country Fire Authority becomes a volunteers-only agency and all paid firefighters from the CFA and Metropolitan Fire Brigade join a new Fire Rescue Victoria.

A parliamentary committee examining the proposal yesterday released response-time data showing the CFA’s 35 integrated stations — those with both volunteer and career firefighters — responded to incidents within their standard eight-minute benchmark in 91 per cent of cases. For volunteer-only stations in “medium urban areas” this was achieved in 56 per cent of cases — below CFA benchmarks.

In a letter to the committee, Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Andrew Ford slammed the release of the data as potentially misleading, saying response times should be measured with “outcomes, service quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness”.

Volunteers at an integrated station in Eltham have threatened to leave if the restructure proceeds, writing to CFA chief officer Steve Warrington and Mr Merlino that “tensions have been increasing” and some staff “are refusing to interact with volunteers at all”.

Mr Merlino said the government would “engage at each of the 35 integrated stations to ensure we have a solution that suits them”.

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