Tuesday, 15 October 2024

 Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:36): (1172) The action I seek is for Minister Symes to reinstate the rolling replacement program for Fire Rescue Victoria – not too much to ask, I would have thought, on a Tuesday afternoon. I rise because since we last met in this place, on 12 September, motorists on the Burwood Highway, including an ambulance, were forced to dodge a 9-metre ladder that fell off the back of a truck. And by a truck I mean an appliance, a fire appliance – a 19-year-old fire truck en route to a fire call. A mechanism used to secure the ladder to the truck had completely sheared off, leaving the ladder unsecured and resulting in it flying off the back of the truck, quite literally.

Modern fire trucks of course are fitted with safety devices to alert the driver of an unsecured ladder. This was a 19-year-old appliance that did not have that feature. Firefighters were informed of the ladder flying off the back of the truck when a paramedic called it in – a paramedic. Thankfully, members of the public intervened and removed the ladder from the roadway themselves – thank you, Victorians – ensuring that the safety of the motorists was maintained.

This incident raises significant concerns regarding the dangers faced by firefighters being forced to rely on a failing Fire Rescue Victoria fleet, plain and simple. Due to the lack of planning and funding from this state Labor government, these old and increasingly dangerous fire trucks are being relied upon by firefighters when protecting our community, including my community in Ringwood. Recently we have seen a litany of breakdowns within the FRV fleet, putting both firefighters and our public at significant risk. Some of these failures include an unconscious patient being forced to wait as firefighters sent to rescue them were trapped inside their own truck due to an electrical fault – trapped inside their own truck – in 2024. Firefighters in Bendigo were forced to rescue themselves from a 19-year-old ladder platform when it failed above a going structure fire – had to rescue themselves. And firefighters in Tarneit were forced to enter a house fire without water to conduct a search and rescue when their truck failed – in Tarneit.

Firefighters in my electorate and right across the state of Victoria – no-one is immune to this – continue to raise with me their serious concerns of the risks they and the public are facing because of Fire Rescue Victoria’s unreliable fleet. There is simply no excuse for the constituents in my electorate of Ringwood, much less anyone else’s electorate, to have to dodge ladders flying off the backs of the trucks. Firefighters in our community deserve a world-class fire service. They pay for it via the fire services levy but they are left to rely on old, broken-down fire trucks that are not fit for purpose. It cannot be allowed to continue. I would ask the minister to take urgent action, as I have requested.