Tuesday, 30 April 2024

 Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:25): I wish to update the house on our nation-leading investment in fire prevention and firefighter safety. Last week I visited Huntly with the CFA chief officer Jason Heffernan, CFA volunteers and others from other emergency services, including Victoria Police, ambulance and FRV, to officially launch the $3.4 million purpose-built fire investigation training facility. It is the first of its kind in Australia and provides volunteers and staff with state-of-the-art training to better understand fire patterns and behaviours, including where and how they get started. I was shown around the facility by Nicole and Frank, who run the centre. They showed us four rooms and a carport that had been specifically designed to be burnt and restored every few months and told us how the facility is designed to put volunteers at the forefront of fire investigation training.

I have known about the importance of fire investigations in this work. I had the honour of joining some of the investigators on the ground straight after the January fires, and it is just amazing what they are equipped to do. The facility will help us better understand the causes of fire, whether it is structural or wildfire, how it started, whether it is deliberate et cetera. The facility helps develop better prevention measures and suppression tactics to build safer, educated and more resilient communities. Last year there were 500 fire scenes that investigators responded to, so this is a real critical-need area. For reasons like this, the facility is an asset for not only our hardworking firefighters and volunteers but also the community at large. I am proud to keep delivering for our growing emergency services volunteer base, with over 2100 volunteer applications submitted to the CFA between January and March, bringing the total number of volunteers to over 51,000.

While I was in Echuca for the regional sitting I announced the opening of this year’s $15 million volunteer emergency services equipment program grants. This popular grant program allows brigades to purchase new trucks or equipment or make upgrades to their stations so they can continue this essential work. Both VESEP and the Huntly training facility are great investments from the government in support of our emergency services.