Wednesday, 16 October 2024

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (19:09): (865) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Emergency Services, and the action I seek is for the minister to provide funding at long last for both the Foster and Mirboo North fire station rebuilds. The minister will be aware that I have been asking for this one for some time, but there is now added impetus in that I believe the minister or at least the government has just in the last day or two signed off on a lease arrangement for Foster CFA to be able to have a new site, which is on Crown land on former railway land in Foster. We have a site now ready to go. It will be leased from the Crown by the CFA. Dave Jones and his volunteers at the Foster CFA have been waiting for this for well over 10 years now. Certainly the entire time I have been there we have been waiting for funding for a new fire station at Foster. Mirboo North is in the same boat. I know captain Trent Venten and the team there also have had promises made – in fact we celebrated before the last election as the CFA gave advice that they were providing capital funding for both of these stations, along with Yarram, which is finally now being done, but that money evaporated. It seems that it was taken back by the government, and we are now still waiting to see funding for the rebuild of these stations.

Apart from bringing them up to modern standards, both of these brigades have trouble literally getting the trucks that they have into the stations. You can go to either side of the folding doors and see the chips on the brickwork, because the trucks simply do not fit. Indeed both brigades are limited in the trucks that they can get because some of the newer trucks simply will not fit in their outdated and very old stations. We need to support our CFA volunteers. There has not been enough support for them, particularly in these locations. Foster and Mirboo North, I understand, were one and two on the capital requirements list of district 9 for a long time and still are, and we are waiting to see that support. Now that we have the site sorted for Foster, we certainly need funding to get a new station built. Secondly, at Mirboo North, as the minister herself and the Premier as well saw when the storm hit Mirboo North earlier in the year, there is a completely inadequate facility at the moment. We do need funding for both of these stations, and I ask the minister to provide it as quickly as possible.