Thursday, 20 November 2025

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (17:29): (1447) My adjournment is for the Minister for Environment, and the action that I am seeking is for the minister to significantly increase the levels of work for the external plant panel contractors the government engages for fire mitigation work. When contracts were granted to former timber industry harvest and haulage contractors when that sector was closed, concerns were raised that they may take work off the external plant panel. When I raised this, the minister’s response on 6 June last year attempted to allay those concerns. His letter says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Similar volumes of forest and fire management work as previous years will be made available to the panel.

He also said that funding to the harvest and haulage contractors was new funding, indicating it would not impact on the external plant panel. This did not eventuate, and we saw a major reduction in work going to that panel. I raised it again in December, and the minister responded in January this year, saying that the reduction in work was a temporary variation and that the volume of work will increase for the balance of the financial year and align with previous volumes of work. Well, guess what – it never eventuated again, with in some cases little and in some cases no work being allocated to these contractors.

Then last week at an information session for external plant contractors, a slide was shown as part of a PowerPoint display, and it said, referring to the former harvest and haulage contractors, that their assets are now considered internal assets and must be considered before external plant are engaged. This was followed by the verbal comment from a staff member, ‘Why would we employ you when we can get the work done by them?’

So I ask the minister to please restore the same levels of work to the external plant panel, and in answering this question he might also consider providing me with a budget of works that they have received each year over the past five years so we can make some comparison; I think you will find it has reduced significantly. It is common knowledge that our bush currently needs – desperately needs – higher levels of management, with fuel everywhere and fire season coming on. I ask the minister to please reconsider his stance and grant them more work.