CFA volunteers losers: Andrews panders to United Firefighters Union

The Andrews Government’s pandering to the United Firefighters Union will cost CFA volunteers dearly over the next two years.

Feeling the heat: While the United Firefighters Union continues to receive what it demands, CFA resources face ongoing cutbacks. Picture: Getty Images

ANY CFA volunteer who thinks their brigade is sheltered from the impacts of Fire Rescue Victoria’s formation is naive.

Volunteers’ access to new trucks, stations and even training is under threat, as they compete with the billion-dollar behemoth that is Fire Rescue Victoria, formed from the merger of 38 CFA stations with the MFB.

We already know the cost of running the fire services is blowing out to ridiculous levels, driven in large part by United Firefighters Union pay deals and an enterprise agreement that creates gross inefficiencies.

Late last month the Department of Justice and Community Safety revealed it had to hand over an extra $222 million in 2019-20 to run the MFB and CFA, putting the total cost at $1.25 billion, which its bureaucrats revealed was in large part due to the costs of delivering on the union’s enterprise agreement.

The UFU’s 777-page EA shows that since the Andrews Government was elected in 2014 it has lifted the number of career CFA firefighters from 696, working at 34 outer Melbourne and regional city CFA stations, to 1177 working at 38 stations by the end of last year.

The 70 per cent rise in career firefighters was not driven by need, given population growth in most of these 38 stations was less than 15 per cent over the past six years.

That growth was driven by a perverse set of union rules that artificially created new roles that weren’t needed.

The UFU EA lifted the minimum number of career firefighters on pumpers from three to four and banned cross-crewing, which meant each appliance – pumper, pumper-tanker, teleboom, rescue or HAZMAT vehicle – had to have its own dedicated crew on standby that could not work on each other’s vehicles.

Add to that the vast array of generous language, gym, overnight stay, travel, leave allowances and overtime and you soon realise why budgets are blowing out. At least 600 CFA career firefighters earn more than $60,000 a year in overtime. MFB firefighters managed to rack up $37 million in overtime in 2018-19, with just $1.8 million of that spent on a fire call.

But don’t expect the Andrews Government to reign in the blowouts, when Premier Daniel Andrews has demonstrated that what the UFU wants the UFU gets.

What’s more likely to happen is that CFA resources are cut.

Just last week The Weekly Times asked Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville about the blowout in fire services costs, to which she replied an extra $250 million had been poured into the service, with much of the money going to the CFA.

Yet the reality was last year’s budget papers showed the CFA’s capital spend for new projects was cut from $60.7 million in 2018-19 to $22 million in 2019-20. And even the Government’s own October 2020 Fire Services Reform Program shows just $126 million is being spent over five years on CFA volunteers, nothing like $250 million in one year.

It’s a game of hiding the truth to create what one former world leader would describe as “alternative facts”.

●  Peter Hunt is The Weekly Times senior reporter

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