Tuesday, 2 December 2025

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (02:15): (2180) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Environment, and it relates to bushfire preparedness or lack thereof in this forecast summer season. We saw only last week that the seasonal bushfire outlook for 2025–26 has a heightened, increased bushfire risk. We have heard the Premier speak about the dangerous bushfire season ahead of us, yet we have a thing called the fuel-driven bushfire management data on the government’s website which is 18 months old. We have been told by the government that there is going to be a significant bushfire risk season. We are being told by experts – Emergency Management Victoria and the AFAC have spoken in detail on this. We know that there are dry landscapes. There has been high rainfall and lots of fuel load. We are going to have high fuel. Ironically the government make commentary about how Victorians should be looking after and reducing vegetation around the home, something I entirely endorse during a bushfire season, yet they are not doing what they are asking us to do.

We have got a thing in this state called the Safer Together – and what a misnomer that is – statewide fuel reduction risk. What happens for that 70 per cent residual risk is that the government incorporates out-of-control bushfires that have occurred in their data as part of its fuel reduction program in order to meet their targets, which are flawed. Over the last 10 years it has produced an average of under 1.5 per cent annual fuel reduction, whether that be by preparatory burns or through mechanical means. That is 1.5 per cent, whereas the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission made commentary, recommendation 56, that stated that the government should set a target of 5 per cent on an annual rolling basis. On top of that, we have Unimogs and G-Wagons offline, and the government is begging interstate to have these fire fleet vehicles to help support both preparedness and bushfire threat.

The action I ask from the minister – and Victorians deserve transparency, not spin – is that this summer, rather than burying the truth, you release Victoria’s 2024–25 bushfire risk management report so that every district can be aware and can try and prepare as best it can, in the face of these deficiencies, for the bushfire season ahead before it is too late.