Tuesday, 21 March 2023

Fire Permits Victoria

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (19:04): (103) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Emergency Services, and the action I seek is for the minister to immediately allocate additional resources to correct the substantial delays and process issues plaguing the Fire Permits Victoria website. Applying for burn-off permits or fire permits is something that needs to be done in an extraordinarily timely way. My local farmers still burn off their stubble. In certain areas of my electorate that is necessary because the stubble is so dense and you can get infestations of slugs and snails, which then damage the subsequent crops that are planted in that area.

Simon Allen, who is a farmer in the Hexham area, has been trying to get a burning permit approved; however, it has now been over a week and he has not received that approval yet. Now, there are a lot of issues around this. It does create substantial stress within the farming community because there is a limited time frame that they have to be able to make sure the weather is right but also to ensure that the burn-off is done, the fire is put out appropriately and then we get to the next stage of the cycle, which is sowing. Simon has shared with me that there have been a lot of changes. Of course now we have gone on to Fire Permits Victoria. He has been trying to pursue every avenue through the CFA to fast-track the permit but has not had any progress other than their saying they are working on it. He has just been told that there is a huge new workload and they are working through all of the applications as quickly as possible, but obviously that is not sufficient. These fire permits need to be approved asap if we are to stay on track for our business of sowing crops in a timely window for production, which is now already behind due to what used to be a very straightforward job. Simon fears as a landholder that he is very stressed and will burn out without a fire permit within the restricted time frame. They will incur massive issues if they just go ahead and burn without a permit, with the police probably knocking on the door about that, and the penalties associated with it are quite hefty as well.

There is still a lot of confusion, but what is happening at the end of day is that we are not getting these fire permits approved through the Fire Permits Victoria website in an appropriate time frame. There are other issues plaguing the website: difficulties in uploading maps and other information as attachments to the application. It sounds to me like this needs a substantial amount of work to get it right and get it working, and so that is why I ask the minister to take immediate action to put those additional resources into Fire Permits Victoria so that we can get a quick response and Simon Allen can get his fire permit approved as soon as possible.