Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, undermined by the Andrews Labor government

In Australia’s liberal democracy, we like to think that policy is formulated in the fairest and smartest way due to it our pluralist nature.

We like to believe that passionate people, who develop expertise in their area of concern shaped by historical experience, are respected and incorporated effectively into policy development to deliver the best possible outcome.

An important issue is how Australia addresses bushfire, which requires both full-time employees and volunteers in order to cover Australia’s large land mass that includes vast rural areas urban areas.

This article focuses on recent legislative changes to Victoria’s fire service sector, effective from July 2020, and how they have adversely impacted upon Victoria’s Country Fire Authority (CFA) given that the latter’s concerns were virtually ignored by government legislation.   

Prior to the new legislation, concern had been evident that paid and volunteer firefighters would be split into two separate services as negotiations broke down in 2016 with regard to Enterprise Bargaining Agreement involving the CFA, Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and the United Firefighters Union (UFU).

In 2016, after the Emergency Minister Jane Garrett resigned after strongly opposing the UFU’s demands, the CFA chief executive at the time, Lucinda Nolan, stated the union's claims were unaffordable, prohibitive and divisive, while Andrew Ford from Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria (VFBV) said so-called “veto clauses" would give the union too much power over operational decisions given the requirement that seven paid firefighters be dispatched to every fire which would undermine volunteers.

Tensions emerged despite some CFA support for reform to enhance Victoria’s capacity to address fires.

For example, in 2017, Peter Flinn, recently retired after 44 years’ service with the CFA and a Life Member of Dunkeld Rural Fire Brigade in western Victoria, noted that reform was needed given that the boundaries between the CFA and Melbourne’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) of career fire-fighters had not changed since 1945 despite Melbourne’s huge population expansion which meant that CFA volunteers now routinely operated in suburbia as well as in rural areas and country towns. 

Flinn expressed a hope that the CFA would return to its roots and focus totally on providing a “country” fire service with a correspondingly smaller, more supportive and less bureaucratic organisational wing”, and that the Fire Services Levy (implemented in 2013) would accord the CFA its fair share of funding to maintain and improve its equipment and buildings.

But, by May 2017, the Labor government had already decided that it would submit legislation to Parliament to merge the CFA’s integrated stations with the MFB to form a new body, Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), with Premier Andrews stating “We will facilitate the CFA being what it should have always been — a purely volunteer service”.

In response, the VFBV’s Andrew Ford stressed that the move would “both undermine community safety and cost taxpayers and their households an arm and a leg”, as integrated stations were the most cost-effective way to deliver services.  

The heated nature of the fire services issue was evident by two Liberal Opposition MPs, who had indicated they did not want to vote on Good Friday 2018 for religious reasons, reneging on a parliamentary convention of pairing which refers to an arrangement where a parliamentarian agrees to abstain from voting while a member of the opposing party is unavailable due to illness or other serious commitments. They voted while the paired Labor MPs were absent.

However, from July 2020, the MFB was replaced by FRV to operate 85 stations throughout Victoria’s major cities and towns, including a takeover of the CFA’s existing 38 integrated stations given that the CFA was now entirely a volunteer firefighter organisation as the CFA's previously paid staff and commanders were seconded back into the FRV to run the CFA.

While co-located stations would still include both career and volunteer firefighters, if volunteers chose to stay there, the FRV now supported Victoria’s 1,220 CFA volunteer brigades with the CFA  expected to support recruitment, development and retention of volunteer members.

The legislation overruled CFA concerns, as revealed by submissions to the related committee for the Firefighters Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform)  Bill.

For example, Trevor Cheeseman, a CFA volunteer for nearly twenty years, the Lieutenant of Carlyle CFA and Deputy Group Officer in the Rutherglen Group of Brigades, predicted that the reforms would lead to a loss of volunteers from Integrated Stations which will affect surge capacity, albeit the extent would not be known until the next campaign fire.

Cheeseman noted that the reforms would impact CFA Volunteer Leaders most at a time when volunteering is already being affected by families being busy with weekends having become working days or ‘catch up on the jobs’ days.

He also suggested that the reform would lead to policies being more “bound by red tape and procedures designed to keep us safe from harm and to prevent litigation but also eat away the valuable time that a Volunteer can afford to give”.  

But Cheeseman’s biggest concern was how the reforms would erode unity within the CFA through a management structure “that is seconded from another organization” given that a group mentality of FRV “cannot reconcile with the view of members that deliver for no pay” as “the views of either party will never align”.

He predicted that the new structure, without paid leadership for the CFA, would result in a leadership void that would see “the remainder of the contributing members … fade away from their roles in CFA over a period of time” which will also lead to a “lack of volunteer, unpaid, free labour”.

In contrast, Greg Plier, then a Senior Station Officer based at West Melbourne fire station and a CFA volunteer for 8 years prior to his 15 years as a career firefighter with MFB, supported the reforms as a minimum of 7 professional firefighters would now respond to all FRV calls (metropolitan and highly urbanised areas). This would now include an Incident Controller, pump operator, two Breathing Apparatus (BA) firefighting crew, two BA back up/emergency crew, and a safety officer.

Plier argued that the previous model at times suffered from delays in terms of coordination between CFA career appliance and those manned by volunteers which could also be slowed by insufficient numbers for the latter, and by not all CFA volunteers having BA qualifications or being equipped with structural Personal Protective Clothing (PPC) which could hamper firefighting and rescue operations and place the public and firefighters at risk.

With the new structure, Plier noted that all firefighters would benefit from highly trained technicians that could support local crews across the state with specialist advice, expertise and personnel to help mitigate lower frequency, but high risk events.

While the Victorian Government provided a $126 million funding package for the CFA to go towards critical training and equipment, which included new personal protective clothing for each active operational volunteer firefighter and fifty new dual cab appliances with burn over defensive systems, many senior CFA officials had resigned by July 2020, including the CFA chief officer Steve Warrington who had led the Victoria’s firefighters during the horrific summer of bushfires.

According to the CFA deputy group officer at Wangaratta, Lachlan Gales, who had served for more than 34 years, the loss of senior leadership would have a “debilitating” impact on the CFA, as well as the loss of career officers who facilitate the work of the brigades, the very people “that make sure we're prepared, that make sure we're organised, the people that develop the training systems”.

With Scales predicted a slower turn-out time due to FRV staff having urban type appliances whereas highly effective crews of career CFA firefighters that would be out the door in 90 seconds, the VBF's Andy Cusack also feared inadequate funding to the CFA would lead to a second class-service given that money was needed for trucks, fire stations and Personal Protective Equipment alone.

CFA leaders expressed a feeling that that the CFA was being “set up to fail”.

During July 2020, the ABC also exposed cabinet documents outlining the influence of the powerful UFU, as seen by its push for an extra $400 million over six years to support 596 extra firefighters, 22 new fire trucks, two boats and six stations, along with the drafting of its own secondment model for the arrangement between CFA and the FRV.

So what has happened in the eight months since July 2020?

While it was reported that the CFA recruited 2,000 new volunteers following the disastrous 2019-2020 summer fires, the 2019-20 annual report noted that numbers actually declined from 34,483 to 30,977, the largest drop since 2013 after being around 40,000 in 2010.

While the new CFA boss Jason Heffernan noted that many of the volunteers had to be removed from operational duties because essential training had not been completed, albeit he hoped the volunteers would return to frontline duties as COVID-19 restrictions ease and brigades are able to train, the Beechworth CFA captain Bruce Forrest argued that said the training system had not been functioning well for the last two years, and that morale was even lower from a letter telling firefighters they were off the trucks.

This issue reaffirmed the view to Forrest that there was little “respect for volunteers, their intelligence, their experiences."

I have recently spoken to half a dozen former CFA senior officials who all expressed major concern about the reforms.  

Craig Allen, 37 years an active firefighter, 14.5 years as Everton Captain and 2 years as Deputy Group Officer, points to the control of fires in rural areas being slowly and sneakily taken away from experienced volunteers, with the Wodonga fire brigade announcing during February 2021 that it was getting 20 new paid staff in Wodonga and a new pumper tanker so they can turn out to grass and scrub fires, usually a CFA volunteer job.

Allen suggests that volunteers are being removed from Wodonga fire station and replaced by more union members, are not being allowed to work with FRV staff in terms of being in the same vehicle, and that permanent staff will not take direction from a volunteer running the fire.

Cheeseman, talking about the many CFA leaders that have resigned because their ability to take the organisation forward has been seriously restricted, argues that FRV staff will not be able to adequately train and manage volunteers, and were not numerous enough to sufficiently cover the entire area of Victoria where trained and effective leaders are needed.

While Cheeseman was told by one CFA manager that CFA leadership could be maintained by paying a retainer, as evident in NSW, Cheeseman noted that this model was much less likely to emulate the same standard developed previously by CFA leaders.

Cheeseman points to CFA leaders ensuring support for brigades with ample manpower and equipment; encouraging comradeship, discipline and respect from all CFA staff; nurturing leadership amongst the volunteers to maintain a productive and effective organisation with the necessary skills to be able to take command an emergency incident and save lives; and managing volunteers in terms of human resources, safety, fireground skills and teamwork.

To conclude, I am in agreement with CFA concerns.

The legislation has undermined the CFA by lessoning CFA morale, control and services, as noted by Lachlan Gales who accuses the government of having total disregard for the CFA’s history which had been built up by “community coming together to do work for the greater good, to protect life and property” through local people who “were motivated and committed to volunteering” with the very “best possible motivations”.  

Cheeseman also points to the potential loss of tradition where many community brigades had been captained by the son or daughter of a past Captain given such people felt a duty to the CFA and their community.

In agreement with Cheeseman, I ask why was such reform needed given that the CFA was effectively building brigades, staff, and assets, and the reforms will now lead to a situation where much higher public funds will be needed to meet greater FRV needs while communities will miss out on resources that they need.

Cheeseman is also right to again ask the question, as also asked prior to the legislation, why the FRV needs to second members to the CFA given that it is indeed logical for the CFA to employ all of the operational staff, and not have Operations Officers and Operations Managers paid by FDV to hold such roles in the CFA.

Under Warrington and previous Chief Officers, CFA leaders were encouraged to play a role in decision making at a high level as District Planning Committees, yet Cheeseman believed that this dialogue will now be hampered by memorandums of understanding that has been formed between FRV and CFA which includes a veto power for the FRV, albeit the UFU has strenuously denied this.

Given that the reform has indeed shattered CFA morale and benefits the UFU most given its influence within the FRV, in line with Cheeseman’s parliamentary submission concern that union demands should not be “at the detriment of an already depleted and disengaged volunteer workforce”, one can only hope that a future Victorian Coalition government delivers on its July 2020 promise to rebuild and restore the CFA’s ability to select, recruit and manage its own staff with regard to its delivery of fire services in current CFA areas.