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

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.