CFA reform: Fully integrated fire service the smart and cheapest option

FORESIGHT and fortitude is needed to resolve the dispute that threatens to cripple the CFA, writes PETER HUNT.

Courage: The Andrews Government needs to stand up to the firefighters union.

IMAGINE Victoria had one fully ­integrated fire service, where volunteers and career firefighters worked together — from Richmond to ­Rochester — delivering the professionalism, surge capacity and flexibility we all need to protect our state.

Impossible, many would say, ­including Emergency Services Minister James Merlino, who argues that the poison of an 18-month industrial dispute has caused irreparable divisions between volunteer and career firefighters.

But then again who allowed this dispute to fester? Who failed to stand up to United Firefighters Union boss Peter Marshall and say “enough”?

Removing Victoria’s MFB-CFA boundary would send a clear signal that all Victorians can play a role in protecting their communities, not just volunteers in the CFA zone. And it would end the absurdity of charging residents and businesses on one side of a road a higher CFA fire services property levy than those on the other side, in the MFB zone.

Why should residents and businesses in far corners of the state be the only ones contributing to the prevention and battles to stop campaign fires that can cost our state billions and threaten power supplies, water catchments and food bowl?

Tapping into the volunteer potential of the three million Melbourne residents within the MFB zone has huge benefits. And we already have SES volunteers operating in units across the suburbs, although they’re grossly under-resourced.

Imagine what Melbourne volunteers could deliver in additional surge capacity during catastrophic events such as Black Saturday.

We already know how successful an integrated service can be.

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It was only two years ago that Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsley called for greater integration, in his submission to the 2015 Fire Services Review.

Obviously any move to a fully integrated statewide service would ­require years of consultation and preparation. As former counsel assisting the Black Saturday royal commission Jack Rush told a parlia­mentary committee investigating the bid to split the CFA: “Incremental change … often produces far better results than radical change.”

As for the union dispute, it’s clear Premier Daniel Andrews and his deputy, James Merlino, are using it as an excuse to split the fire services, rather than showing leadership.

There is no reason the Andrews Government could not face up to the union, cut Mr Marshall’s 480-page enterprise agreement down to size and deliver real reform.

And there’s one other very good reason to spend the next few years working towards a fully integrated firefighting model — it’s the most ­affordable option.

A unified model allows us to have fully paid crews where most needed, a mix of career firefighters supporting volunteers in growth areas and purely volunteer brigades in rural areas.

Not that different from what we’ve already got, really, except volunteers could come from anywhere.

But of course we don’t expect Premier Andrews and his UFU mates to do anything more than divide the CFA, drain it of resources and leave the Victorians to pick up the cost in years to come.

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• Peter Hunt is a senior reporter with The Weekly Times