Victorian Government hands CFA volunteer’s territory to FRV
The Andrews Government has made an 11th hour bid to try and slip reforms through Victorian Parliament that carve even more territory off CFA volunteers.
VOLUNTEER firefighters are being locked out of their traditional fire grounds as the Andrews Government rushes to establish its new career-only Fire Rescue Victoria service by July 1.
While the Government passed legislation last year to bring 35 integrated stations under the control of FRV, it has now sought to expand that number to 38, without referring the matter to the independent assessment of Victoria’s new Fire District Review Panel.
Last week Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville lodged amendments to the Fire Rescue Victorian Act that added three new FRV zones — Lara, Lucas and Latrobe West — circumventing the Review Panel process.
Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Adam Barnett said the creation of the new FRV Latrobe West zone was a shock to local volunteer brigades at Trafalgar and Westbury, who will now be excluded from attending many call outs in their territories.
Trafalgar CFA volunteer captain Danny Mynard said the government had given FRV all territory within an eight-minute response time of its new Latrobe West station at Moe, which extended well into Trafalgar.
“We don’t what’s going on and morale is not the best right now,” Mr Mynard said. “We meet our 100 per cent Service Delivery Standard (response times), yet we feel like everything we worked for is being taken away.”
Westbury CFA volunteer captain David Gridley said the biggest impact would be in cutbacks to call-outs as the volunteers were either sidelined or had to defer to FRV’s Latrobe West crew.
“We get 30 to 40 call outs a year, 15 of those to (join) strike teams,” Mr Gridley said. “If we lose many of those call outs, we lose the opportunity to teach our younger volunteers, future leaders and our surge capacity.”
Ms Neville’s spokeswoman said Latrobe West’s boundaries ensured the community received an eight-minute response time.
“The decision in no way prevents volunteer firefighters from turning out – and the legislation ensures this,” she said.
However local CFA volunteers say they have been told they will not be turning out to Code 3 (non-life threatening calls) and must defer to FRV on Code One (life threatening calls) that fall within areas they have traditionally serviced.
Mr Barnett said the Government was not only bypassing the Panel Review process, but was now using an eight-minute response time criteria to determine the boundaries of new FRV zones.
“It should send a shudder down the spines of all volunteers – when it comes to carving up boundaries the Government is going to preference FRV, even if CFA volunteers have 100 per cent SDS.”
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