Wednesday, 5 June 2019

 Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (10:22): And it is groundhog day. We are back in this place debating a piece of legislation that is bad for fire services, bad for safety in Victoria and, most importantly, terrible for volunteers across this state. Three years ago today we had thousands of volunteers on the front steps of this Parliament calling out this government for bringing in legislation to effectively tear apart the service that they love, the one they support and the one that has supported our communities for so long.

But it is vital we go back to the start. We have to go over some of the arguments yet again because obviously some in the government have not listened, particularly those in the country areas that have volunteer stations that represent and work in their community. November 2014 is where all of this started; it was prior to the 2014 election. It was in that election that the United Firefighters Union (UFU) went out and doorknocked thousands of doors, made thousands of phone calls, sent out so many letters on behalf of Daniel Andrews, the Leader of the Opposition at the time. That was not us saying that; that was Peter Marshall leaking that to the Herald Sun to remind Daniel Andrews who was in charge. When he sent that letter out he reminded Daniel Andrews for every day of his time as the Premier of this state that Peter Marshall was in the background. He is the puppetmaster handling what he wants for the fire services into the future.

March 2015 was when payment started to come forward and the UFU put forward an enterprise bargaining agreement, an EBA that had flaws in it that were so serious that it was going to put at jeopardy and risk how our fire services operate throughout this state. It was an EBA that changed words like ‘consult’. Our side of Parliament have no issue with ‘consult’; we have major issues with ‘consult and agree’. When you start to hand the power away from management, when you start to take the power away from the chief officers who are put in that place to protect us—the chiefs that can work to ensure they can move firefighters from one location to another in the best interest of community safety. As an example, when we had a heatwave back in 2009, chief officers worked with Ambulance Victoria to ensure they could get extra firefighters on the road to make sure they could protect Victorians who had heatstroke and who were vulnerable. As we all know, the Black Saturday fires took 173 lives; the heatwave took more than 300.

The chiefs wanted to make sure that we had extra fire trucks, not for fires but for medical emergencies. And what happened? The United Firefighters Union intervened, took it to Fair Work Australia and tried to stop the chief using his powers to have staff on the road to protect Victorians in their houses—to stop five extra fire trucks assisting ambulances to come out and respond when people were in their greatest time of need for medical emergency response. That ended up in Fair Work Australia until the early hours of the morning, and it was only then, when the chief turned around and said the responsibility should fall back on the UFU if anyone dies the next day. They withdrew their application. At 2 o’clock in the morning, in Fair Work Australia, they withdrew that. They are the conditions they wanted to put inside this EBA—another major flaw.

This government talks about all they want to do with equality, having people have the rights to do what they want, yet they bring in a piece of legislation that discriminates against people wanting to return to work in a part-time mode. If someone goes off work to have a child and then wants to return in a part-time capacity as a frontline firefighter, they cannot do it. It is interesting: the former minister said in this place that there are part-time firefighters on the frontline in the Victorian fire services. Yet when I go and speak to the chiefs, they are having trouble finding them because they are not on the frontline fire services. The frontline fire services have a 10 and 14-hour roster, and with that 10 and 14-hour roster, if you are a career firefighter, you can at the moment, without promotion and without change, see what you are doing for the next 20 years, including your leave and what shifts you are doing. It is so stable for the firefighter. That is not in the best interests of community safety. We need to make sure there is flexibility in that roster. We need to make sure, like the police service, like the ambulance, that they can rotate people, move people around. In the police force at the moment they can move people based on incidence of crime. They can move people from one location to the next at the orders of the Chief Commissioner of Police. The chief commissioner works and gives those powers through different ranks of the police services to ensure that the police can have people where they are needed when they are needed. If there is a crime spree happening in Dandenong, then move extra police down to Dandenong.

But at the moment you cannot move firefighters around without permission from the United Firefighters Union. That is not in the best interest of community safety. And that is what this side of Parliament is all about—ensuring that we get that. The enterprise bargaining agreement was eventually knocked back. It was declined; the CFA EBA was knocked back. It was interesting how many of those people who knocked it back still remain.

Now we all know, and not in order, that Jane Garrett was the Minister for Emergency Services, and Jane Garrett openly said that she could not support this legislation. It was interesting that one person came out in the media at the time who said that Jane Garrett was not in the right position to say that—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I ask the member for Gembrook to refer to members of Parliament by their correct titles.

Mr BATTIN: Yes—the member for Eastern Victoria Region.

Members interjecting.

Mr BATTIN: Yes, Jane Garrett in the upper house—thank you very much—the former minister. Someone came out at that time and said that basically Jane Garrett from the upper house was not in a position to come out and talk about the issues and to put on record publicly, not just inside the cabinet room, her concerns of how it was going to affect our fire services. The person who came out in the media and said that is now the emergency services minister. They came out and said that Jane Garrett, the member for Eastern Victoria Region, could not state publicly what she thought, that the bill that this government wanted to bring in at the time and still tries to force through is damaging to our fire services.

Then the new minister, the member for Monbulk—another former Minister for Emergency Services—decided the way to fix this was to take on that role. He went against everything he had already said to his volunteers. We had stat decs signed against the member for Monbulk from his local volunteers of the lies that he had said in this place around the 100-day delivery of presumptive rights legislation. He said the easiest way to do this was to sack the board. So if you do not agree, you sack the board. So an independent board who had run the fire services successfully for a long period of time were dismissed because they would not agree with the Premier and the then emergency services minister—that is, Claire Higgins, John Peberdy, Ross Coyle, Katherine Forrest, Michael Freshwater, Peter Harmsworth, James Holyman, John Schurink and Michael Tudball, all people who were respected within the fire services. Some of them were volunteers in the fire services, some of them served in the fire services, and they are the ones who were dismissed.

Then on top of that this government went out and headhunted Lucinda Nolan for the position of the CEO of the fire services. Lucinda Nolan had a wonderful history within the Victoria Police service. That is why this government headhunted her. She was the right person at the right time to make the changes that need to happen within the CFA. She was a person who was all about community safety. But she would never do it—never do it—and disrespect volunteers, and she would not just bow to every demand of the United Firefighters Union. And what happened to her? She was forced out of the fire services. She had to resign and then had to sign a confidentiality agreement because the government were afraid that she would go out there and disclose exactly how bad this legislation was and how much it was going to cost. So they brought in Joe Buffone, and Joe Buffone came out and publicly sent a letter to the minister to say exactly what this was going to do and what risks it was going to pose the community. And what did they do to Joe Buffone? They got rid of Joe Buffone—and any person that spoke up.

Worse than getting rid of Joe Buffone—a person who has served our state for years, for decades, in emergency services; a man who has protected our community; a man who only believes in community safety and not politics—the member for Monbulk came in here and said the only reason he was gone was because of money, because he asked for a pay rise. They tried to tarnish a man who had the respect of the fire services, the respect of the community, and they came in here and said basically they did it because of money.

Let us put it on record then: we have now got a chief officer/CEO, and Steve Warrington is taking on that role. The role that he has got, I will guarantee you, pays more than Joe Buffone was ever on. So if someone agrees 100 per cent with the government, they tend to get a fairly decent pay rise. I will put it out there that Steve Warrington’s role is now exactly what Joe Buffone said should have been happening. Joe Buffone had issues with the structure and the rank structure within the fire services. It was not about money, but he wanted to make sure that the chief officer could ensure that the fire services were where they were needed and when they were needed, and that was important.

Other people that have gone since then include Paul Stacchino and Jim Higgins. We have got the 10 senior MFB firefighters who complained of bullying who have also gone, and we should not forget Peter Rau, again a respected member of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. He is someone who had served for a long period of time. He protected his community, and he was bullied out. He was pushed out of the fire services in no uncertain terms in a disgraceful act—a disgraceful act—and what is worse is that now that investigation, as we have seen in the paper recently, has been pushed aside because there was more than one time of bullying. I would have thought WorkSafe should be investigating and charging anyone responsible for bullying within the workplace to a degree where a person is at home and who has come out publicly and spoken about mental health issues—and again, what did this government do? When Peter Rau left, what did this government do? They went out and said—that is right, the current minister said in answer to the question, why did he leave?—he left because he is a bit unwell, or for family reasons, when he actually left because of mental health reasons.

A member interjected.

Mr BATTIN: Did I apologise? No, the minister went out and misled the community on exactly what happened and tried to cover up the fact that he was bullied out. Now we are seeing that investigation pushed under the rug, and Peter Rau will not get what he is entitled to. He was asked why he has not sued the MFB. The reason he has not sued the MFB is that Peter Rau is not after money; he is after the best fire services in Victoria. He is not after cash; he is about ensuring that the bullying, the thuggery and the intimidation in our fire services is gone once and for good.

We are seeing with this legislation today some major, major concerns, and one of them is that the government keep telling us it is very similar to the legislation we debated last time. I will put it to the government that this is not the same legislation that was debated through this house last time because they put through amendments in the upper house, and some of those amendments are in relation to a fire registration board, which members of this house have not had an opportunity to talk about and how that is going to affect firefighters in the future. You are going to have a position where any person who wants to become, at the moment, a career firefighter—and there is nothing stopping this going into volunteer firefighters in the future—will be given fire registration by a board or a panel. They will have to be registered with this board before they can become a firefighter. So who is going to be on that firefighting panel? Who is going to be on it? One person is appointed by the minister. It could be a good retirement plan for Peter Marshall. What do you reckon, Minister? It could be a good one for him. We could put him on there.

A member interjected.

Mr BATTIN: Through the Chair—you might want to ask the minister should they want to have that. The second person appointed will be someone appointed as a current firefighter voted for by firefighters. The third person appointed will be a former senior firefighter as appointed by firefighters, and the fourth person appointed will be an academic voted for by the firefighters. So effectively you are giving three UFU members—three UFU sympathisers—the power for who the chiefs can and cannot employ.

Now, as we bring in Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) they keep trying to tell the volunteers, ‘You know what, volunteers? Don’t worry, don’t worry, nothing’s going to change. However, when we do make these changes anyone employed within the CFA will be done by the chief’. But then you go through the subsections in 25C, take out the fact that the chief can have a say, and then the chief goes, ‘Look, there’s no-one here that I think is suitable for this role’—the new regional role maybe up in Bendigo, and they have got the new regional manager up there—and they go, ‘Look, there’s no-one really suitable at the moment. What we’re going to have to do is go externally’, and the chief goes, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic’. So we go out, we go external, we look around, we find someone from New South Wales and we bring that person down. They go through the interview process and the chief says, ‘This is great. I love it. Fantastic’. You would think then the chief has the final say? No, no. He has then got to send it off to the UFU and their little panel to decide whether they can be registered. If the UFU panel decides no, they are not going to be registered, the chief does not have the right to employ who he wants. He has lost that power. He has to go through a UFU-selected board before he can get them on board. That is a disgrace.

The chief CFA officer should, in any new legislation, be able to employ who they need in the interests of public safety. As soon as you take that away from them, again you are taking away the democratic process, you are taking away the power of the chief and you are reducing what they can and cannot do. The chief fire officer is there to protect Victorians. The chief fire officer is to make sure that the management system of the CFA is there to support the volunteers. If he—or she, in the future—cannot have a say in who is appointed, then you have taken away the rights and that power and that is a disgrace.

Last time this piece of legislation went through in the upper house they had the fire services inquiry, and the Victorian government actually responded to this inquiry and at the time they had some pretty interesting statements around what they were going to do. Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria (VFBV) has come out fairly strong on this and said that there were some areas in this that people supported and some they did not support. Some examples of those recommendations:

The Government ensure compliance with its consultation obligations under the Volunteer Charter and the Country Fire Authority Act 1958 prior to proceeding with any further reform of the fire services.

The government’s response? ‘Support’. I am not sure. I do not think there have been any consultation. We have only had about 12 hours since this piece of legislation has come back into the Parliament. We have had 12 hours! VFBV was called in yesterday.

Ms Neville interjected.

Mr BATTIN: The minister is saying that it was on the website—for how long? A year? Well, this legislation was only introduced yesterday, so we have to make sure it has got a check. We have got to go out and consult with the VFBV and to make sure there are no changes, because a word change like ‘must’ to ‘would’ or to ‘could’ can make a major difference in any legislation, and I am going to be honest—I cannot trust the government that there are no changes. I just cannot trust them. Why? Because the government ensured compliance with its consultation clause before the last time the legislation was introduced when we on this side of the house legislated that all volunteers must be respected. When we legislated that they should be consulted the government, then in opposition, supported that right up until the time that Peter Marshall said to them, ‘No. You only consult with us. You only deal with us because we are the ones that knocked on thousands of doors’.

Another recommendation:

The Government undertake meaningful and balanced consultation with Emergency Management Victoria, the Country Fire Authority, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, staff and volunteer representatives prior to proposing any further reform of the fire services.

What do you think the government said? ‘Support’. Another fail. VFBV was called in here yesterday morning for their consultation. They were in here yesterday morning for their consultation, and I actually understand the VFBV is in quite a difficult position because they 100 per cent support their volunteers. I note that yesterday the member for Frankston spoke about another volunteer organisation. The VFBV are known and will be known as the organisation that genuinely represent a majority of volunteers. However, when you are looking at these things and at getting them in here yesterday for the consultation, what fear do you think you would have if you were the VFBV at the moment? Because where is your funding coming from? It is very difficult for the VFBV at the moment with the government, who will hardly deal with them and hardly consult with them and who freeze them out. What fear have they got if they come in here and actually come out and say anything? Where does their funding go? We need the government to go on record to say that their funding is guaranteed for the future. We did. When we went to the election we said that, no matter what, we would guarantee VFBV’s funding.

Ms Neville: And you lost.

Mr BATTIN: Hold on, I will just put that on record—and we lost. So I will send a message to the VFBV and say in this message, ‘The minister said, “And you lost”’. I will take that as meaning their funding is gone, this government is not going to fund the VFBV going into the future. You are not going to do it.

The next recommendation:

The Government develop and publish a detailed implementation plan in parallel with any further fire services reform proposal.

‘Support’—no; failed. Have not done it; have not achieved it.

A further recommendation:

CFA staff should continue to be employed directly by the CFA …

‘Support in principle’. Well, that is a, ‘Yeah, maybe. We’ll let them support them as long as the UFU employ the people and show that they support the people coming through’. So it is all about who is going to employ them from there. And there are many other examples to go through there.

But we do have concerns about the fire services board. When they are going to be having a selection panel and a process that comes through, our fear is how this can be expanded into the future. On fire services boards, the plan from the UFU all along is about taking over and controlling the fire services, including volunteers, including who is doing what and where. They want to have a position where every person who wants to be a firefighter has to be registered through this board in the future. That means that a UFU board in the future could potentially have a position where they expand this through regulation to actually include volunteers. The problem we have got with a lot of this legislation is a lot of it is based around ‘Trust us; the regulation later’.

Now, I am going to go onto the separate part here for the firefighters presumptive rights compensation. In this term of Parliament we attempted to introduce a standalone piece of legislation. When we attempted to introduce that legislation the government denied us leave. They denied leave to introduce presumptive rights legislation when it was supposed to come through. The government is failing on what it committed to originally, which they spoke about publicly—‘We’ll deliver it within 18 months’. They failed on that from the original election commitment, but more importantly they failed on the 100-day commitment that the member for Monbulk made to his own volunteers in his area.

And that is why I think it is too important to have these pieces of legislation together, so I am going to move a reasoned amendment. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this bill be withdrawn and redrafted as two separate bills to:

(1)   retain the provisions providing for the presumptive rights of firefighters; and

(2)   take into account further consultation with Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, volunteer firefighters and other associated organisations about the proposed amendments to the Metropolitan Fire Brigades Act 1958 and the Country Fire Authority Act 1958.’

And the reason that we want to separate this is because fire presumptive rights legislation is too important to play politics with. We need to make sure that presumptive rights legislation comes through immediately. People who protect us—we need to protect them. We need to make sure that this presumptive rights legislation is put through in the fastest possible manner, and we will do anything on this side of the house to support that going through. Attaching it with the FRV to pretend that it is all part of one package is disrespectful to every firefighter. To bring in presumptive rights legislation that is not equal between career and volunteer firefighters is not fair on our volunteer firefighters.

I do not care what side of the house you are on—any member of this house: if you think the presumptive rights legislation is equal between career and volunteer firefighters, you cannot read legislation. The bill blatantly has a panel where volunteer firefighters will have to go before that panel to justify that they are a firefighter. They are going to have to justify that position. Now, the government are saying, ‘Trust us. We’ll do some regulations about the definition of that volunteer firefighter’. This is the same government that sent a letter out saying that they wanted volunteer firefighters to have 150 turnouts before they could qualify for presumptive rights legislation. This is the government that wanted to totally discriminate and bring in the original Tasmanian model of presumptive rights legislation that, just to let you know, a Liberal government fixed, making it equal in Tasmania for all firefighters. They want to bring in the old model that says that volunteer firefighters will be treated differently.

Someone said today, ‘Same fire, same smoke, same cancer—they should be treated the same’. To not treat them the same is disrespectful—to put them in a position where they have to go and justify that they are firefighter. The records should be there. The CFA has a responsibility to keep those records. The CFA has a responsibility to make sure it is all there. However, when you have not got how it is going to be defined, it is very difficult to argue anything other than to assume that this government is hiding something. They are hiding the fact of what they want to put in the background to make it difficult for our volunteer firefighters. They are hiding so that volunteer firefighters are not out there in force and saying, ‘This is a disgrace, and you must treat us the same as you’re treating everybody else’.

In terms of the attachment of this bill to the FRV and the timing, we have gone on and we had our debate—the procedural debate—around bringing it in, and we note today that every other bill has two weeks until it is debated. What was interesting was that they brought in the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Amendment Bill 2019 earlier today, and someone on this side said—I think it might have actually been the member for Murray Plains—‘Two weeks? Oh, that’s good. That’s good to bring it in in two weeks’. And the Treasurer responded, ‘Yes, because this is an important bill’. As opposed to presumptive rights legislation? That is not important? Is fire services reform not important? Actually, even worse is the Disability (National Disability Insurance Scheme Transition) Amendment Bill 2019. They have just said that is not important because they have given us no time to consult. The Treasurer said that—the Treasurer said these bills are not important. And then they are saying that they are in a hurry to get this bill through—that they have got this to get this legislation through.

During the briefing today, when we had the discussion with the department, we spoke about the importance of this bill. And when we were talking about the timing, they actually said, ‘No, no, we’re not really in a hurry. Politically wise we’re in a hurry because we don’t want it sitting on the paper all through winter, but we’re not really in a hurry’. ‘We wanted to bring it in after the federal election’ is probably one reason—

Members interjecting.

Mr BATTIN: No, they were my words there, the words ‘not really in a hurry’ because the minister has stated that ‘We’re not going to implement this until the middle of next year’. So if we went through to August and through a normal consultation process, that would still give them 12 months.

Ms Neville: Yes, because we have got work to do.

Mr BATTIN: The minister says, ‘There’s work to do’. Obviously the minister is not very good at work, because 12 months from August to August is no drama at all. You should be able to implement it—no drama. Two weeks would make no difference at all, and we wanted to make sure that we could go out and we could consult. We wanted to make sure that people had a say. All this is is the government trying to hide the things that are going to affect our volunteers in Victoria.

There is another issue that they will all bring up on the other side. Let us be honest: not one of them will miss this one, so I will get in before them. They will not bring up the fact that we were debating on Good Friday, because that is the part they want to ignore. Every single one of them will talk about pairing. I am going to put it on record—and I will proudly say it—that I have been around just a few of the CFA volunteers and I have been up through the communities and I represent an area of high fire danger, and when a fire comes through the Dandenong Ranges, which could happen in any summer season, and a family is packing their things and deciding, ‘Do I take the dog or the wedding photos?’, and they are in a hurry to get out of there, not one of them is going to go, ‘Remember that day there was a fight between politicians in the Parliament?’. But they are going to go, ‘Labor took away 1000 volunteers that should be here protecting us. They’ve reduced our services, and they’ve reduced our search capacity’.

They are now putting FRV and CFA into, they say, integrated stations. They are not integrated; they are putting two organisations within the one building. The department today could not even explain exactly how it is going to go with primary response. Who is going to do primary response? What areas are the primary response going to be in? It is all going to be with what is within the board later on and the panel later on. They can all say it, but at the end of the day the FRV legislation allows for the board to change and for boundaries to change. When the boundaries change, those boundaries can then take away—

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! There is too much audible conversation in the chamber.

Mr BATTIN: I will invite you one day out to an area of a CFA station, and you might understand—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Gembrook! Through the Chair.

Mr BATTIN: So when we are out at those CFA stations where we have got integrated stations, some of them work very successfully. However, we know what the government’s plan is here, and we are starting to see it come into action. Lucas fire brigade—there are no volunteers at Lucas; there are never going to be volunteers at Lucas. That was not part of the plan we had at the election. What about Armstrong Creek? How many volunteers are going to be at Armstrong Creek? Zero. The commitment was for a CFA station at Armstrong Creek. It did not say about there being no volunteers. Latrobe—they are going to have a career-only station. Morwell are voting to get out and change so that they do not have volunteers in there. Pakenham are considering what is happening with volunteer and career stations. They are in a position now where they are going to have two separate organisations and two chains of command; everything is going to be separate. You are going to need to put a piece of sticky tape down the middle of the station, a line of demarcation, to mark who can go where and when. If you think—

A member: A Berlin Wall.

Mr BATTIN: That is exactly right—a Berlin Wall through these stations. If you think that is bad, it is already happening. There are already stations—Warrnambool is an example—where volunteers are not allowed in parts of those stations, the stations of the community they built, they love and they protect, and they are now told they cannot go into certain parts of those stations. Why? If it is truly integrated, then it should be a station for all. They should be in the same truck. They should be in the same uniform. Why, in some of these areas, are they FRV and CFA? Even when we asked about uniforms today when they go across on secondment, the answer was, ‘Oh, yes. CFA uniforms’. So I said, ‘So every FRV person who goes across is going to have two uniforms, depending on what day their duty is. They are going to go back and forth with uniforms’. At the end of the day you are going to have people who are coming across from the FRV to effectively control, manage and do as they please within the volunteer fire services.

I want to finish off on volunteer CFA, which has been in operation since the 1940s. It is an organisation that has the ability to change. It is an organisation that has the ability and the legislation currently to modernise. It is an organisation that already has some stations that have changed and modernised—for example, Dandenong. Dandenong has CFA volunteers and career firefighters fighting fires in that area. They back each other up, and they work together. Changing that to FRV will separate them into their organisations and show total and utter disrespect to those in the CFA. On top of this, in the future, we have got no guarantees from the government. There is nothing in there to protect the rights of volunteers. The government’s argument is that they have got things in this legislation to protect them. They have not got a charter for volunteers in the FRV to make sure that the FRV people protect the CFA. At the end of the day there is a little bit in this bill that does state they must show respect. But, let us be honest, this government ignored the charter that was legislated by this side of the Parliament.

At the end of the day we need to protect our volunteers. We need to support our volunteers. We need to stand up for our volunteers. But most importantly, on both sides you need to not have the politics in it and put it back to community safety. What they have done is they have gone 100 per cent away from community safety, and they are focused on paybacks to the United Firefighters Union.

 Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (10:52): I rise to speak in support of the Firefighters’ Presumptive Rights Compensation and Fire Services Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2019 again. We have heard from those champions of firefighters their obstructionist scaremongering. Really, all they had to offer was that. There was no mention of firefighter safety or increased community safety, which is what this bill is about. When I spoke on this bill in the last Parliament, I spoke in support of the legislation of course, and my intention was then and will always be to protect and empower our firefighters, be they career or volunteer, and provide them with the support, the certainty and the recognition they so thoroughly deserve.

We are fortunate to have the best firefighters in the world. I have seen that firsthand, and I would argue that with anybody. When they are called out to protect their communities, they put their lives on the line. They answer the call, they leave their families and they go to work. They flock to emergencies in support of their communities. They do so together, like they always have done and they always will do. But they deserve to know that they have got a government that has their backs, and it would be nice to have a Parliament that has their backs.

We plan to put in place modern and supportive governance and leadership structures that reflect the changing risks and that will empower these firefighters to meet the challenges and the opportunities of the 21st century, as 21st century Victoria bears very little resemblance to 1950s Victoria, when this legislation was put in place originally for the CFA. We have got a growing population, ever-expanding suburbs, urban fringes and regional centres and a rapidly changing environment as well. That is what this legislation achieves. It provides much-needed and long overdue reforms to the state’s fire services that ensure Victorians can rely on modern and effective local fire services to keep them safe wherever they live. It gives fire services the interoperability that they have needed for years. Equally as important, this bill will provide presumptive rights to cancer compensation for both career and volunteer firefighters. These presumptive rights are long overdue; we cannot wait any longer.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that this bill would already be law if it were not for the deceptive, reprehensible behaviour of those opposite, where two members of the other place misled the upper house and the Victorian people on Good Friday last year. If it were not for them, firefighters who are currently suffering from cancer, putting their families through just unimaginable trauma, would already have this. They would already be covered. We on this side recognise the invaluable work of our firefighters, which often requires them to work in very, very dangerous situations, and we will put in place the very best presumptive rights in the country.

I know that those opposite will scream that they have not had time to look at this bill and review the legislation. Well, I can assure them right now that this bill is largely identical to the previous one. In fact in good faith we have actually put the amendments that were made in the Legislative Council in the last term in this bill—the amendments that you actually came to the table with and sometimes asked for. This bill has been on the parliamentary website ever since Good Friday last year, and it is incredibly important that we get this done now. When we introduced this bill into the house last year, the government felt very, very strongly that these reforms should not be debated over a fire season. The fire season is over, and it was a long fire season. We had over 17 000 volunteers attend many fires during that fire season. But we all know that our fire season will be back before too long and these reforms will take time to embed. No-one is saying that they will not. There is lots of work to do between now and then, and that is why we must pass this legislation now to give our fire services time to transition and provide that certainty to our career and volunteer firefighters when they are on the fireground and let them get back to their jobs, serving their communities as they do year in and year out.

This bill establishes the new Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), which will cover the existing Metropolitan Fire Brigade boundaries and serve metropolitan Melbourne, outer urban areas and larger regional centres across Victoria. These will be known as Fire Rescue Victoria districts, and this structure brings Victoria into line with most other states in Australia that have reformed their fire services since 1979. It will bring the CFA’s 38 integrated stations into the new FRV organisation, including the extra 450 career firefighters which the last Andrews Labor government guaranteed and delivered.

Our current fire service arrangements and boundaries were conceived in the 1950s. They have played an important role in responding to emergencies and statewide disasters in Victoria. Do not get me wrong—I am proud to have served under these boundaries. I do not want anyone to think that I was not. I respect history. I respect all those firefighters, both career and volunteer, who actually operated under these boundaries tirelessly, selflessly and with great courage. I am proud to have been part of it, but now is the time to change those structures that have been mostly unchanged since the 1950s. They must be updated to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The population is growing in our cities and in our urban corridors. Victoria has expanded from 3.2 million in 1966 to 6.5 million people in 2018. By 2051 we will reach 10 million people in Victoria, and we need a fire service to match that. Most of those people would be expected to live in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and the regional centres, and this is played out by statistics. There was a 51.7 per cent increase in the number of fires responded to by integrated brigades over a recent 10-year period. Our fire services must reflect that change to keep our community safe. It is as simple as that.

By making this reform we are delivering on the recommendations of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, which found that the metropolitan fire district is not reflective of metropolitan Melbourne. This reform also delivers on recommendation 63 of the royal commission by establishing the independent Fire District Review Panel, which will advise on future changes based on a risk assessment of the assignment of responsibility for a given area.

We have heard from those opposite with their scaremongering, but let me guarantee you that those that sit on the fire district review panel must be qualified to do so. They cannot be serving officers, employees or representatives of the fire agencies—the legislation makes that very, very clear. There is no chance of a conflict of interest, despite what those opposite might say. Where the CFA currently determines where firefighters go through policy, this legislation enshrines that CFA volunteer brigades are consulted and supported to meet the growing demands on them in our growing suburbs. That does not actually exist at the moment.

This reform will ensure our fire services adapt in line with our state and that Victorians can rely on a fire service that is modern and responsive to local needs, regardless of their location. Under the reforms the CFA will be further protected under law as a volunteer service and our 1220 CFA brigades will continue to serve their communities day to day as they have always done as well as providing vital surge capacity during emergencies.

Just on the scaremongering around the fire registration board, those opposite are saying it does not protect volunteers. I would refer them to part 8 of the bill, which says clearly that the registration board will only be for employees of FRV. It will affect paid and career staff, not volunteers.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.