Country Today - October 16th

Victoria's Auditor-General has released a scathing report revealing the state's fire services hold barely a quarter of the $1.5 billion needed to replace a critically ageing firefighting fleet.

Country Today's Jade Egan spoke with Volunteer Fire Brigade's Victoria Chief Executive, Adam Barnett.

The Auditor-General has confirmed what volunteers have been saying for quite some time now, and that is that CFA manages its fleet well, but it simply cannot replace trucks it isn't funded to buy.

For CFA, its fleet's aging faster than it's funded to replace it.

It has found that more than half of CFA's 2,208 trucks are at least 15 years old, and about a quarter of them are more than 25-year-olds.

And it's also found that fire authorities overall, so we're talking Country Fire Authority, FRV and Forest Fire Management Victoria, need an estimated $1.5 billion over the next 10 years to address critical fire truck replacement and upgrade needs.

But they've only received around one quarter of the funding they actually require.

So a pretty damning report.

How have we ended up here?

Look, I often describe this that our oldest trucks in CFA are 37 years old.

So this problem didn't just happen overnight.

It has come from decades of underinvestment.

And when the maximum age of a tanker is designed to be 20 years, the fact that you've got trucks that are now almost double that, indicates to you how long this has been a problem.

And, you know, governments love to make announcements, but they're always very short-term announcements.

They're one year, two years, four years.

A fleet the size of CFA, and it's one of the largest emergency service fleets in Australia, requires long-term plans and that's why we've been really consistent in what we're calling for and that is fully funded 10-year plans that not only give Victorians some confidence around the equipment that's going to be you know rolled out to protect them during our terrible fire seasons but also gives confidence to local manufacturers to actually upskill and really uplift their own production here in Australia.

So they're actually able to plan in advance of these orders and keep the pipeline running.

So what commitments have been made by government and other parties to solve the problem?

So the Auditor-General has found, so it stated that CFAE over the next 10 years requires $962.5 million.

And as at the date of the report, it reports that government commitment only equals $306 million.

So that's a gap of almost $656 million.

So that's not a small cap, Jade.

That is a gigantic gap between what's required and what's actually been promised.

The government, the Minister Ed Brook made an announcement last week of an additional 100 trucks for CFA and another 50 trucks for FRVs.

The issue, so look, we always welcome those announcements.