Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (19:02): (2010) The adjournment matter I seek tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Environment and it relates to the significant and serious topic of bushfire preparedness. It came to my attention last week and through contacts in my electorate that the minister through Forest Fire Management Victoria removed from service a quantity – a large quantity, which I am asking the minister to find out and report to the public – of its firefighting fleet. They are called G-Wagons and Unimogs. G-Wagons are a light vehicle, and Unimogs can hold up to 4000 litres. These vehicles – and there are substantial numbers of them, 500 in one, 90 in the other – are used in bushfire preparation. They are used in mitigation – in fuel reduction burns – they are used in terms of reducing that fuel load, either through these cool burns that Forest Fire Management completes or through manual removal of bushfire load.

The government over the past 10 years, through analysis, has only been completing approximately 1.6 per cent of its own fuel reduction targets statewide. Recommendation 56 of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission was a 5 per cent rolling target of fuel reduction to keep Victorians safe after one of the most horrendous bushfires on record. And what has the government done? Well, it is only keeping approximately 1.6 per cent of its own Safer Together – or not so safer together – target. Who has been asked to backfill this? The CFA – the volunteers with ageing trucks and limited resources – have been asked to backfill while this significant number of this fleet is removed from service for structural defects.

The government has known about this for almost eight years. $32 million to implement this – the minister has inherited this, but Victorians are inheriting a huge bushfire risk and the government is not addressing it. So the action I seek is for the minister to commission an independent review with real accountability to outline what it is going to do to protect Victorians, to get these vehicles back on track and back in service, reduce bushfire fuel loads and protect our communities in what the Premier says will be the most dangerous season coming around.