Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:53): I seek leave to move my motion 1231 in an amended form.

Leave granted.

Nick McGOWAN: I move:

That this house requires the Environment and Planning Committee to inquire into, consider and report, by 1 June 2026, on the 2026 summer fires across Victoria, including but not limited to:

(1)   the preparation and planning by government, emergency services agencies and the community ahead of the fire season, including management of public and private land and roadsides;

(2)   the causes and circumstances of the bushfires, including climate change and the adequacy of the government’s climate policies and actions, forecasts, warnings and public education on bushfire threats;

(3)   funding, equipment and appliances for the Country Fire Authority (CFA), Fire Rescue Victoria and Forest Fire Management Victoria, and recruitment and retention of CFA volunteers;

(4)   the emergency responses to control and contain the fires, including adequacy of resources and communications;

(5)   resilience of critical services and infrastructure such as electricity, water and telecommunications during and after the fires;

(6)   the impact on the community, business and agriculture and efforts to aid in recovery;

(7)   the impact on the environment, including native wildlife, and any measures to better protect native forests, including technology for early detection and firefighting in remote locations; and

(8)   lessons from and progress on the implementation of recommendations from previous inquiries, reports and royal commissions.

It is an honour to rise today and speak on this motion. It seems to me that never has a government had the opportunity to do so much and has in fact done so little. We all know this because over these last weeks – and in fact a couple of months now, because we are now headed into February – unfortunately it is Victorians themselves who have had to fend for themselves in an unprecedented way. But before I get into that, I did note that one of my colleagues in the lower house yesterday, Annabelle Cleeland, the member for Euroa, gave a heartfelt speech on behalf of her community. Annabelle and her community were directly affected, and in order to, I suppose, fully appreciate and get the essence of why it is this inquiry is so important not just to the people that were affected but frankly to all Victorians, I would like to quote from Annabelle’s speech that she delivered yesterday:

On the Friday of the catastrophic fire day, I received a call from our neighbour. His wife is my best friend, and we are raising children together. He screamed into the phone, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive. Tell her I’m alive.’ For our families throughout our region – Longwood, Ruffy, Euroa, Highlands and right across the state – this summer did not just take homes and livestock, paddocks and fences. A devastating fire tore through our region, and it shook something deeper. It shook people’s sense of safety. It is the fear of driving down a road you have known your whole life and suddenly checking the tree line. It is the fear of hot winds. It is the fear of a text message, a siren, or that relentless bloody ‘beep-beep-beep’ of the VicEmergency app. Your heart rate will never stop rising when you hear it. It is packing the car in a hurry and telling your children to grab what you love most – important documents, photo albums, the pets, your wedding dress – and then trying to explain why the bike cannot come because it cannot fit, or why the chickens and the cubby house have to stay, why the dream you spent your life building with your partner cannot be packed in the back seat, and why dad has decided to stay and defend. You drive away praying that there will be something to come home to. But at that exact moment, others are driving as well. The pager goes off, the boots go on, and the truck goes out the gate, driving towards flames while their own families sit at home waiting.

For me that beautifully encapsulates just a moment in Annabelle’s life and just a moment in the life of the family of one Victorian. But the truth is – and Annabelle points this out very clearly – it affected many hundreds if not thousands of Victorians, and so there are very, very serious questions that need to be and must be answered. Other speakers today who will follow me will speak in regard to the CFA more precisely, and they have great expertise and a love and passion for our volunteers, as we all do, but they know them more intimately than I. Members Melina Bath and Gaelle Broad will both speak to that on our side of the house, as will Wendy behind me – Wendy Lovell – and so I will leave that to them.

I am the Shadow Minister for Fire Rescue Victoria, so I will focus most of my comments on that aspect. I think what Victorians perhaps do not understand is that Fire Rescue Victoria and our career firefighters also played a role in defending not only property and not only people – they have a much larger role than that too in providing an emergency medical response right around our state, perhaps better than any other state in this country and perhaps the best in the world, in my opinion. I want to make this very clear to all Victorians: we are united in everything we do to make sure that our firefighters, plural, be they volunteer or career, have the very best equipment that money can buy, have the very best apparatus that money can buy and have every bit of support from this entire Parliament. It is with some pride today that I stand – together with the support of the crossbenchers, without which we would not be here – and look to forge forward with this important inquiry so that if mistakes were made, they are never made again; if there is underinvestment, that underinvestment ceases; and where things are promised, they are actually delivered, because time and again from those opposite what we are seeing is a failure to deliver. We are seeing a concentration on words and not actions, and that simply has to cease.

That was never more evident than when I went to Bendigo recently. All the firefighters up there are career firefighters based there from Fire Rescue Victoria. Again, not many people know this, so I am going to give Victorians the list. Victoria has some 4032 firefighters – that is, career firefighters – in total. We have 765 corporate employees. We have 85 stations. Of those 85 stations some 47 are in the metropolitan area. For most Melburnians they are the fire stations we would expect and encounter every day of our working week. But what Victorians in Melbourne may not know is that we also have 38 fire stations in Greater Melbourne and regional Victoria. I am going to list them off because it might surprise some people. We have Ballarat, Belmont, Bendigo, Boronia, Caroline Springs, Corio, Craigieburn, Cranbourne, Dandenong, Eltham, Frankston, Geelong City, Greenvale, Hallam, Lara, Latrobe West, Lucas, Melton, Mildura, Mornington, Morwell, Ocean Grove, Pakenham, Patterson River, Point Cook, Portland, Rosebud, Rowville, Shepparton, South Morang, South Warrandyte, Springvale, Sunbury, Tarneit, Traralgon, Wangaratta, Warrnambool and Wodonga. What I mean to demonstrate there is that our career firefighters working for Fire Rescue Victoria are not only in metropolitan Melbourne but are right across the state.

They ostensibly have two functions. One is to preserve life and property in the case of a fire. The other, and it is really important that Victorians understand this, is they are in something close to 60 per cent of cases the first responders on a scene when it comes to a medical emergency. This is where it matters in terms of Fire Rescue Victoria and how efficient these men and women are. I have spent a night – it was an honour to spend a night – with the South Melbourne brigade. Within 90 seconds those firefighters are in that truck and they are out that door. They are not just getting ready; within 90 seconds of receiving a call for help they have left the station. Whether it be your mother, your child, a relative, a partner, a friend; if someone has had a heart attack; if someone has almost drowned or has drowned in a pool or at the beach; if someone is having a cardiac arrest; whatever the incident is – and it could be a car incident, because in close to 60 per cent of those cases, certainly here in the metropolitan area, a firefighter will be the first on scene and the first to administer life-saving support.

So it matters that not only our firefighters but also, as I have mentioned already, the CFA and all of these emergency services have the best possible equipment, because I can tell you what, if those firefighters can get in that truck in 90 seconds flat, we do not want to let them down by them getting halfway there or not even getting out of the station bay because their vehicles break down. I can tell you it happens all the time. I have only been the shadow minister for a number of weeks – barely months – and I have visited very many stations, and every single station I visit in the metropolitan area, to say nothing of country areas, which fare much worse – and Gaelle Broad, I will come to you in a moment, and Bendigo, because I will come back to that theme – every station I have visited has had an issue, including Dandenong, where of the two pumpers that they have there, one of them, the hinge of the door was literally detached from the door. You might think that is minor, but I tell you what, if that affects the seal on the door, if suddenly that truck is engulfed by flames, if suddenly there is an issue there, we are putting the safety of the very people we are sending in to save people at risk. It is entirely unacceptable. It is absolutely an occupational health and safety issue for those firefighters.

I spoke a moment ago about Bendigo. I had the great pleasure of going up to Bendigo and spending some time with my colleague Gaelle Broad. Gaelle has done a sensational job of highlighting that in Bendigo there is a station that is not fit for purpose. From the bushfire royal commission recommendations flowed the decision to basically refurbish and rebuild the entire fire station at Bendigo. It was built for between five and six firefighters, and today it houses 12 every single shift – completely unfit for purpose. They have a Coates hire room in the middle of a bay which is intended for the appliances. That is where the men and women have to get changed into their overalls. It has been that way for four years. What is worse, they have shunted out the volunteers – they did that years ago – put them in the back blocks, in an industrial estate, in anticipation of the new station being built. But the new station was never built. What was built instead? A temporary station, which was finished nearly five years ago, and it has been sitting empty ever since – $2.5 million for construction, another million dollars thereabouts for the purchase of the land, rounding up, so $3.5 million, and they are renting it back from the CFA.

You have an empty fire station, a ghost station, and it is all in the Premier’s own electorate. This is happening under the Premier’s watch. Under the Premier’s watch we have a station that is not fit for purpose. It is a situation where there are only three showers. If those firefighters, for example, in Bendigo go out to a fire right now or tonight or at any moment – we all know that time matters, because the particulates that they get on their body and their uniforms start to penetrate their body and poison them – they cannot have a shower quickly enough. But with 12 of them, they have got two showers for men and one for women, so what happens if you have three or four women on shift? They are waiting. Every minute that goes by, every quarter hour that goes by – because it cannot be a quick shower; the whole idea and the purpose is to shower properly, to wash yourself thoroughly – our firefighters are being poisoned slowly, one by one, like some scene from Chernobyl, because we have not got our house in order. And when I say ‘we’ I mean the government. It is simply absolutely intolerable in 2026.

If we fast-forward for a moment, this government has now made it not a purpose of general revenue to fund these operations; it has devised a special tax of its own making – a volunteer tax I call it. So we are taxing volunteers to provide services both for paid and for volunteer firefighters and departmental staff – secretaries of departments, which is what the government wanted to do – and we still have a situation in Bendigo in 2026 where they have a station that is more than 20 years old, which is not fit for purpose, and an empty fire station that could house 12 firefighters every day of the week. It was not constructed the right side of the train lines. It does not have the water pressure, I am told, but you would need to correct that. It does not have the ability for the appliances to come in the rear of the building, they have to back in, so it is a health and safety issue. You cannot make this stuff up. The incompetence is next level. And if you can get over the incompetence for the minute – and I cannot, but if you could – then just think about this for a moment: it is in the Premier’s own electorate, and she has done nothing about it for four years long. If the Premier cannot fix her own backyard, what chance do Victorians have? Sadly, they have none.

I remind Victorians of this: volunteers do it because they are sensational citizens and they want to look after their communities. Career firefighters do it for the same reasons: they, perhaps like many professions – firefighters, ambulance officers, paramedics – want to contribute to our society. But I can tell you this about career firefighters: they have not received a pay rise in five years.

1 January 2021 was the last time firefighters got a pay rise in this state. That is appalling. I think if the public knew that they would be appalled. The starting base wage for a firefighter is also something I need to talk about, because I think there is a public perception that somehow firefighters get these grandiose wages. The starting wage for a firefighter is in the order of $80,000. I would suggest to Victorians that that is not grotesque – in fact I would argue it is not enough. Anyone who wants to argue with me that any firefighter is paid too much I would happily take on any day of the week, because I will not have it – it is just nonsense. Those firefighters go every day into situations that put them at risk.

While I am talking about them, the fact is that I have sat in this chamber for the last four years almost, and we had an opportunity that we let pass in terms of presumptive legislation that would save our firefighters if they contract cancers, because typically we know they will – and credit to the Greens, because last year they attempted to make this happen, and we had a collective failure. I have spoken about this publicly before. I am not saying anything new. We had a collective failure to say to firefighters, ‘When you do contract cancers – which we know is scientifically proven you are more likely to contract because of the job you do in saving our lives and our property and saving us when we have our heart attacks and when we have our car accidents and when we are drowning and all these other incidents – we are going to have your back.’ We should all be ashamed of ourselves that we have not done that. If I have anything to do in the remaining time I have in this place, it is to try and bring presumptive legislation back to the fore and back to this place to consider, because we did not do it. We added some last year in a craven political act by those opposite to include some female cancers, and we are 100 per cent supportive of that. What we were not 100 per cent supportive of is the fact that it did not go the whole way. They should have included more, and they could have. I am going to leave my comments there because I want to give others an opportunity, and I am conscious I will get an opportunity at the end of this to speak as well. There are many who want to contribute.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (16:11): Yesterday and today it has been touching to see the bipartisan and multipartisan words of support in this place that everyone has shared as they reflect on this summer’s bushfires. The words of sympathy from those that represent bushfire-affected communities and indeed those that do not has been truly touching. After hearing these words it is my belief that everyone in this chamber and the other one feels some really deep sadness about the fires that have affected us this summer. That is why for me I am finding it really hard to read this motion as prepared by Mr McGowan. I thank him for bringing it to this place, because I have got some words to say about our CFA. While some opposite may continue to play politics with the CFA, I think that on almost every level our emergency services need to be thanked and honoured.

It is the Allan Labor government’s belief that the independent inspector-general for emergency management is the very best placed individual to provide informed and honest advice about this summer’s bushfire response. Might I remind those opposite that it was the Napthine government, which some members were a part of, that established the inspector-general for emergency management in 2014, with the then Labor opposition supporting it. Even though they are the ones that created the role, those opposite seem to fundamentally misunderstand what the inspector-general actually does. The member for Gippsland South in the other place stated incorrectly that if the inspector-general were to investigate and gain insight into the January 2026 bushfires, that would be tantamount to ‘marking his own homework’. Not only is this statement factually incorrect, but the member for South Gippsland does not even know that the inspector-general is not in fact a man. It is a woman, and her name is Emily Phillips, and she has had the role for nearly two years. Instead of wanting an independent and informed opinion from the inspector-general, what we have before us is the opposition playing politics.

Whilst I have heard remarks about the likelihood of this motion before us passing, I want to introduce to the chamber some amendments. If it comes to pass that this inquiry reference passes with the will of the chamber, I would like three additional terms of reference to be considered that would enhance the motion before us and enable the Environment and Planning Committee to look into these with due consideration. I am asking that they be circulated.

I move:

1.   In paragraph (7), omit ‘and’.

2.   After paragraph (7), insert the following new paragraphs:

‘(8) the impacts of climate change on the natural environment, which has resulted in more frequent and intense bushfires occurring in Victoria;

(9) the prevalence and impact of misinformation leading into and during the fire season;

(10) the interjurisdictional support into and out of Victoria leading into and during the fire season, including interstate and international deployments, Commonwealth support and relief efforts; and’.

Amendment 1 will allow the committee to seek to understand how climate change interacts with fire management before, during and after bushfires. Climate change is already challenging our ability to manage fires. It leads to longer fire seasons, increased firefighter fatigue and reduced capacity to share resources nationally and interstate and in fact internationally, I might add. Even before fire seasons it shortens our ability to prepare and reduces the time available for safe and effective planned burning. After the bushfire season is finished, climate change is increasing the cumulative recovery costs for individuals, for the community and for government. While some are vague in their commitment to, understanding of and belief in climate change, there is a major contrast between the pre- and post-2000 fire eras that demonstrates, tragically, how the intensity, the size and frequency of our state’s bushfires have dramatically changed.

Amendment 2 will empower the committee to examine the effects of misinformation and miscommunication on bushfire-affected communities. As I have said, we have heard some members from this place and others inexplicably go after the very public resource that is the VicEmergency app. It is worth noting this app has been a critical resource for those Victorians that are most at risk from bushfires. On New Year’s Day 697 warnings were issued by the VicEmergency app, and 6.3 million people have downloaded the VicEmergency app. These are not just statistics, this is life-saving information being distributed to Victorians across the state. This amendment before us grants the committee the ability to understand how dangerous misinformation conflicts with that provided by the emergency app and other officially distributed information. I will not give any more airtime to that misinformation, just to say that this amendment will examine the role that both public figures and the media play in making sure that what is being said about these emergencies is both accurate and informed.

Finally, amendment 3 will allow the committee to investigate how Victoria’s bushfire response is complemented by both the Commonwealth and other jurisdictions. We know Victorians are incredibly grateful – and we heard that in the contributions here – for the support we have received from across the country. No state or territory can do this on their own, and that is why Victoria has a robust and agile national resource-sharing centre to ensure that all jurisdictions get the support they need during these incredibly difficult times. This is a critical amendment that will allow our state to improve and build on our interstate and Commonwealth emergency services cooperation efforts that are so important to our bushfire response.

These amendments drastically expand the scope of this inquiry, I understand that, but as mentioned, this will be supplemental to the inspector general’s insight that will be provided at the conclusion of the season. It further illustrates to Victorians that we are actually listening to them and that we want real improvement in Victoria’s bushfire response. Over this summer period I have had multiple meetings with stakeholders who understand better than anyone not just what their communities need to recover from these bushfires but what are their very cause. They do not need us telling them how to rebuild their community. They absolutely know it is our role here to listen to them and to understand their concerns and not to play games.

I had the distinct benefit of receiving a briefing from the state emergency management commissioner on this season before the season began. Emergency Management Victoria’s understanding of the risk factors when it comes to bushfires, the conditions that lead to bushfires and the preparation that is needed to mitigate the risk of bushfires is truly world class and world leading, no doubt about it. But it is not just this knowledge itself that saves lives, it is how it is communicated to those most at risk. It is my firm belief that Emergency Management Victoria’s ability to communicate bushfire risk to Victorians has saved countless lives. In meeting with the commissioner, he outlined to me the value of being able to communicate to Victorians that despite rainfall in the lead-up to this season, he still wanted people to understand that there remained a very significant and serious risk of bushfire and to listen to the feedback of Emergency Management Victoria and the CFA throughout the season.

Some are playing politics with these groups and undermining their credibility. We here are listening to them and we are working with them to provide them with the support that they need to prevent bushfires, what they need to fight those bushfires when they do occur and later how they can continue to support communities to recover, including the recovery of those agencies themselves.

This is not just lip-service, it is played out in the numbers, and under our annual investment in emergency services that number has doubled.

In conclusion I am just going to finish my remarks by saying that this government backs our emergency services at every level. We trust Emergency Management Victoria, we trust the CFA and we trust the independence of the inspector-general for emergency management and any insights that she can provide into our bushfire response this summer. Not only do we trust them but we thank them. We thank them for the work they have already done and the work that is still to come, because as we have said many times here over the last two days, the season is not over.

These proposed amendments that have been circulated I understand if passed will work in conjunction with the inspector-general’s forthcoming investigation to make sure that government is as bushfire-ready as possible for our increasingly dangerous bushfire seasons. The truth is that those seasons, the ferocity, the frequency and the intensity of them, are increasing time and time again, and that is why I am such a supporter of all of the amendments that I have moved here today. The truth is that climate change is having a very real impact on our seasons; that our cooperation with our friends in other states and territories and the Commonwealth is needed just as much as ever, if not even more; and that every bit of information that comes to people in the critical time needs to be accurate and correct and reflective of information that has come from trusted sources. That is why all three amendments have been moved before us today.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:22): I rise to speak on behalf of myself and my Greens colleagues with respect to motion 1231 in its amended form moved by Mr McGowan. From the outset I thank Mr McGowan for bringing this motion before us and will state from the outset that the Greens will be supporting it. Also at the outset can I just take a moment to acknowledge all of those who have experienced loss and trauma as a result of the recent fires. The most recent fires resulted, as we know, in the death of farmer Max Hobson and the loss of over 340 homes and almost 1000 other structures. Countless people have lost their farms and livelihoods, and whole towns, like Ruffy, have been destroyed; tens of thousands of farm animals have been killed; hundreds of hectares of our ecosystems have been decimated along with countless native animals; thousands and thousands of Victorians experienced extreme stress and uncertainty as they evacuated or made heartbreaking decisions about what and who to leave behind; many thousands of people were impacted by heat and smoke, reflecting a big spike consequently in demand for acute health care; and there are the mental health impacts which will continue long after the last ash has washed away. The road to recovery from fires like these is going to be huge, and the risk of course has not passed. We still have a lot of hot weather to go, and several fires continue to burn across the state.

We owe so much to emergency services agencies, CFA volunteers, career firefighters and other first responders who put their lives and health on the line time and time again to keep us safe, often while their own properties and their own families were at risk. The fact that more lives and more homes were not lost is a testament to their efforts.

It is entirely reasonable to have an inquiry into these fires looking at the issues outlined because, firstly, we can and always should do better but also because we know that we are going to have more frequent and more severe fires into the future. The trajectory we are on with climate change is truly terrifying. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past 10 years, and the nature of fires is changing. They are getting more frequent, more intense and more difficult to fight. The fires that have just burnt were observed to be unlike anything seasoned fireys have ever experienced. This is exactly what has been predicted by climate scientists, and we are now living it. While heroic efforts of fireys prevented more devastating losses, the fact remains that this state, as it stands, is not well enough prepared for these kinds of disasters into the future.

This was clear in last year’s inquiry into the climate resilience of our state’s built infrastructure, which identified the risks to critical infrastructure like electricity and telecommunications, particularly for rural communities, many of which came to bear during these fires.

The inquiry report also made a range of recommendations aimed at improving the readiness of communities and homes to better withstand disasters and aid in the recovery. Chief among these were the recommendations regarding the establishment of a climate resilience fund to help communities prepare and adapt and a resilient homes fund to help people in high-risk areas rebuild or relocate, but we are yet to see action on this.

Then there is the impact on wildlife, on habitat, on waterways, which are already severely stressed and suffering due to human activities and climate change. The impact on wildlife and our environment is often an afterthought in fires like these, yet recurrent disasters, like this summer’s fires, the Budj Bim and Grampians fires last year and the Black Summer bushfires, are pushing already fragile ecosystems to the brink. While protecting human life and property as a priority is understandable, we cannot allow fires like these to rip through what remains of native habitat time and again. We need to have a discussion about how we can prevent and protect our forests and our grasslands and all of the life that they support.

Then there is the resourcing, of course, of our frontline services. It was disappointing to see over the summer the political fight that erupted while fires were still burning become about accounting, which stifled the real discussion our state should have, which is that our emergency response services to climate disasters need a massive increase in funding. This is something that they have long called for, with so many CFA stations, equipment and trucks all being way beyond their useful life currently. Given what we know is coming in a changing climate, simple replacement will not be enough. The costs of fires alone, before you consider any other climate disasters, are monumental, and they are only increasing. It is time as a community that we had an honest conversation about this and how we are going to fund it. It should be the fossil fuel companies, who are given free rein over our land and over our waters but pay minimal tax, that should be forced to cover the cost of the mess that they are wreaking on our community, not everyday people.

We recognise and welcome the government’s establishment of an independent review by the Inspector-General for Emergency Management and look forward to seeing the outcomes of that process. We firmly support their role and their independence, but the issues they are looking into are not the same as the ones that have been outlined, and there is not necessarily the same ability for the public to participate in that process. A parliamentary inquiry allows different perspectives and issues to be explored, which my Greens colleagues and I believe is complementary rather than duplication of IGEM’s work. Once again, I thank Mr McGowan for bringing this motion before us, and I commend it to the house.

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:28): I would like to thank Mr McGowan for bringing this important motion to the chamber today, because this motion talks about reviewing the causes of and the state’s preparedness to deal with bushfires that have ravaged Victoria in the past month. After every major fire it is important to learn from the experience of those involved so we know what was done well and how we could improve our response before the next fire season, and I believe there are many lessons to be learned from this fire. Mr McGowan’s motion calls for a number of areas to be reviewed, and I will speak to some of those points in my contribution. As Mr Puglielli just pointed out, the inquiry that the government have set up through the emergency management commissioner, although it is called independent, is still a government inquiry, and there is no opportunity for the community to actually participate in it, and it is the voices of those on the ground that we need to hear when we review these bushfires. The people who actually experienced the fires, the people who actually fought the fires – they are the people we should be listening to because they are the ones that have the best knowledge of what went on on the day.

Point (1) in Mr McGowan’s motion talks about establishing the environmental and resourcing starting point for fighting the fires. It is important that we know whether our state government had ensured that everything possible to reduce the risk of major fires had been carried out prior to the fire season or whether more needs to be done in this space ahead of the next fire season.

Our CFA volunteers who are on those firegrounds will be certainly able to tell us whether enough had been done to ensure that we were at the right point to fight those fires or not, and they should be able to voice their opinions on that.

Point (2) establishes the source of the fire – that is, whether the fire was started by nature or whether it was accidentally ignited or deliberately lit. It also examines the effectiveness of messaging to the public on preparedness of their properties and the public’s understanding of and the clarity of weather forecasts and warnings. These are all important points. It is vital that we understand the causes of the fire so that it can be established if future fires may be prevented. It is also vital to know whether the community’s understanding of preparedness, forecasts and warnings is adequate or whether there need to be better public education campaigns or whether the messages need to be simplified. We can only establish this need by talking to those who are affected by the fires, and a better understanding of this has the potential to save hundreds of lives in future events.

Point (3) talks about resourcing of our fire and other emergency services, and this is something that has been hotly debated over the past year, but for some reason the government has been reluctant to discuss the matter with those who are affected. Both the CFA volunteers and FRV, through a campaign led by the United Firefighters Union (UFU), have been vocal about the age and reliability – or should I say unreliability – of Victoria’s ageing fleet of fire trucks, and this is not a new problem. During the public hearings held in Wangaratta on 10 July 2017 for the inquiry into fire services reform, the then CFA assistant chief officer for the north-east Ross Sullivan, when talking about trucks that were 30 years old, told the inquiry:

We need trucks that are fit for purpose. But in those discussions with people around our firefighting fleet, I have said to them, ‘We’ve people who aren’t born today that we’re expecting to drive these fire trucks to fires in 18 or 19 years time, and drive them for 10 or 12 years post that, without all of the things that they are used to in a normal vehicle of today’s standards’.

That is true. We are expecting a child who is born today in 20 years time to drive a fire truck of today’s standard, not of the type of vehicle he or she will have been taught to drive, and certainly they will be then expected to drive them for another 10 or 12 years beyond that point. We just would not put up with it with our own family cars, and our volunteers should not have to put up with it with their fleet of fire trucks. We were talking about this in 2017, we had been talking about it long before that as well and we are still talking about it today, nine years post that review. We are still talking about trucks that are 30 years old, and I know of at least one ageing fire truck that broke down during the Longwood area fires. The UFU has been very vocal over the past couple of years about the age and unreliability of their fleet, so it is vital that we do discuss what the needs of our fire services are to adequately resource them to make sure that they can rely on those vehicles when they get a call to a fire. It is vital also to discuss the recruitment and retention of volunteers, as we need to understand what we can do to attract more firefighters in our state. I have heard stories from captains of brigades who desperately called for additional support and were told, ‘Sorry, all resources have been deployed,’ which fits with both point (3) and point (4).

Point (5) is another important area that talks about the critical services and infrastructure such as electricity, water and telecommunications during the fires, and this is an area that definitely needs to be reviewed and where changes must be made, as these latest fires have highlighted the fragility of our essential services in bushfire areas, where telecommunications can be poor at the best of times and many residents rely on signals boosted via an electrical system. We can and must do better for these communities.

Point (6) talks of the impact on businesses and agriculture. Business support has been slow in coming and in fact has not come at all yet following the fires. But business and tourist operator income just stopped whether they were directly affected by the fires or not.

Whilst our first priority is always to support those directly affected, governments need to remember the effects of the fire are wide reaching in a community and require a holistic response.

Point (7) goes to the impact on native forests, the environment and wildlife, which is always going to be the greatest when fires are unplanned and burn out of control, which is another reason why our planning and preparedness need to be reviewed. And point (8) recommends reviewing the lessons learned and the progress made on recommendations from previous bushfire inquiries, including the royal commission.

We all know that we live in an environment where fires are inevitable – they are an inevitable fact of life for us – but we can and must do more to reduce the impact and severity of future fires. This inquiry is not about laying blame. It is not a witch-hunt. It is about holding a sensible review of resourcing and practices to ensure our state is best equipped for future fire events. I note that the government has distributed some amendments to the motion. I always thought that we actually had an agreement that we would not amend motions in opposition business, and therefore I will not be supporting the government amendments, but I do commend the original motion to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:36): I also rise to speak on motion number 1231 in Mr McGowan’s name today. I am pleased to be able to share some comments further to what this chamber extensively canvassed yesterday on the very serious and very heavy recollection, remembrance and condolence for the victims of the recent fires that we have seen, which are in fact still underway, and it is a great mercy that they are now approaching containment. But as I and many others said yesterday, we are certainly not out of the woods yet for this fire season. It is incumbent on all of us to remain vigilant and to remain as prepared as we can and to have our fire plans executed ready to go, especially those in higher fire risk areas, especially of course in regional areas, but indeed as well in that outer metropolitan fringe, and even those in places such as growth estates near areas of large grassland as well need to be very cognisant of fire. I think it is a worthy time to remind ourselves of that.

I want to actually jump straight into the conversation that Ms Lovell was raising in relation to the inspector-general for emergency management. At the outset, I appreciate that Ms Lovell was at pains to acknowledge that IGEM is an independent authority. But despite that, the ‘I’ in IGEM does not actually stand for ‘independent’, it stands for ‘inspector’ – it is the inspector-general for emergency management. IGEM has a role to play in all of these types of incidents, and it does that already very well. I would also like to challenge the perception that IGEM is a closed-book inquiry. They do, and my full expectation is they will continue to, embrace and invite public submissions from community stakeholders into their inquiries. I think it is important when we are discussing what we are discussing here with bushfires and with the inquiry process that follows that we are doing so from the basis of accuracy. You can go onto the IGEM’s website and you can see their previous reports. You can see the extensive ways in which they have embraced public consultation and feedback into their inquiries. I do not want to see the very good work that IGEM do denigrated or reduced or minimised as a pretext for establishing a parliamentary inquiry when, as many of us on this side of the chamber are saying, the appropriate authority with the appropriate experience, expertise and know-how is no doubt already going to be undertaking this work.

I also note, for that matter, contrary to comments made by the Leader of the Nationals in the other place, complaining of IGEM that ‘he would be checking his own work’. It is actually Dr Emily Phillips who leads IGEM. Clearly, again, we seem to have a problem where the Liberal and National parties do not understand the very things that they are criticising.

That is why I do have some reservations about the way in which this has been put forward to the house today. I do think that IGEM and Dr Phillips and her team will no doubt conduct an exemplary job, as she is charged to do on behalf of the Victorian people. But the very fact that the coalition are so desperate to try and jump in to apparently make political hay out of this just goes to one of the points that my colleague Ms Watt was making about mis- and disinformation.

When it comes to bushfire, we all have in this state different and varying levels of experience with it. Many have had very recent and very difficult and traumatic experiences with it. I am blessed that despite having lived in fire-prone areas for much of my life I have not had to deal with any of the horrific end of the scale. But it is a very serious thing, and it is a time of incredible anxiety and tension for many Victorians. Those are the times when we need to be as accurate as we can possibly be, to be precise and not just to be peddling something because you think it might benefit you politically without checking the veracity of it.

I have outlined the reasons as to why I believe IGEM should be the most appropriate body to conduct this inquiry. Irrespective of whether the Environment and Planning Committee is charged today to conduct this inquiry that is before us or not, IGEM will no doubt do that work, and I expect that it will do it thoroughly. It is on that basis that I am pleased to rise in support of the three amendments as moved by Ms Watt, who is of course in addition to being an active member of this chamber also the Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Services and has a deep and vested passion in this field. I am grateful to her for including these amendments, firstly, just alone for the reasons I have briefly outlined. Although some of the examples may be trivial, they do go to the point of misinformation and disinformation when it is in a critical setting, when it is in the setting of a state of disaster. The consequences of that, intentional or not, can be devastating. I think that is worthy for us to be looking at or for our colleagues in the EPC to be looking at should this inquiry pass the house.

Another one, which has been raised by Ms Watt, is the impact of climate change on the natural environment. The Environment and Planning Committee is surely the appropriate place for such an inquiry to be held if it is to be done, given its very recent work on its inquiry into Victoria’s climate resilience. I know they conducted a hearing just outside my electorate, up in Emerald, and they conducted hearings right across regional Victoria as well and were able to glean lots of really valuable feedback from communities in and adjacent to my area as well as others across the state.

We are seeing these events happen more often at a greater severity, and that is undisputed. We can challenge and question whether in particular any individual fire event or any individual disaster event is a direct consequence of climate change of course, but you cannot dispute that in the frequency and severity of events that we are seeing, the phrase ‘once in 100 years’ has become almost comical in some places, whether it be fire or whether it be flood. We have always faced those challenges in this country and in this state, but we are seeing it at a greater severity right now. That is an appropriate thing to be considered if we are to be looking at a broader perspective of our state’s fire response, and also, quite rightly of course, it is appropriate to acknowledge the interjurisdictional support that we have had once again from firefighters. I discovered that it was the first time that firefighters from the Northern Territory had come to Victoria, which we certainly very much welcome and are grateful for. As mentioned yesterday, even some firefighters from Alberta Wildfire came down to help, which was an extraordinary act of decency and mateship, which I know all Victorians will be very, very grateful for. To be reaching out from literally the other side of the world and to support each other is very important in these times of crisis, knowing that we also, of course, will send our crews to help overseas in places like Canada or New Zealand or elsewhere where there are disasters occurring. It is a special bond that we have and one that we very much value and that should be acknowledged quite properly in the work of any such inquiry that is to take place.

I think it is important to reiterate at the end as well that we are not at the end of the fire season. There are still many, many weeks to go. We are having a hot day again today; we could have much more heat on the horizon. For those reasons we need to be constantly vigilant to the risk of fire as well. No doubt, as I said, the IGEM will be doing its role as it is appropriate to do, and we should all be respectful of that process in a healthy cynical or critical fashion, as may be the case – we are politicians, after all. We should be observant and watching that process closely, but we should also be allowing the appropriate independent mechanism to do its job properly and thoroughly as well.

I have outlined the reasons for why I am not convinced this inquiry is the most appropriate use of this committee or this Parliament’s time in light of the duplicative nature that such an inquiry would bring. Nevertheless, I am very confident that in either respect, whether it passes or not, the amendments that have been put forward by Ms Watt will make any such potential inquiry much stronger and much more inclusive and give the inquiry a greater ability to actually provide some meaningful reform recommendations that may help in future preparedness as well.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:46): In Victoria and in Australia every summer everyone fears the bushfires that may come, and we always have things that we can learn from and do better. That is why we have inquiries and that is why we have in Victoria the inspector-general for emergency management – IGEM. They do this type of reporting every time that there is an incident. I take some of the government’s points that we do not want to disparage or undermine the work that they do. I am sure they are professionals and do their job well. However, this inquiry is far broader than what I believe IGEM would normally look at, and therefore I agree that what this inquiry will look at is complementary rather than duplicative.

I also take the government’s point that the fires are not yet out so this is somewhat premature. I do agree with that – that it is somewhat premature. It would be my preference that we wait at least until the fires are out before we start looking at what could have been done better. But nevertheless, I think that this is a valuable opportunity for people that have been affected by bushfires to put in their submissions and to appear before public inquiries that will happen. And I think that parliamentary inquiries in general are a really good way– in fact probably the best way in many ways – for members of the public to interact with Parliament, get their views known and get them into a report. So I do think that it is really important that inquiries like this happen. Therefore I will be supporting this inquiry going to the Environment and Planning Committee.

Another concern which the government has raised is the duplicative and wasteful nature of this. There will be some extra costs, I imagine, in travel and accommodation and things like that. But members of Parliament are already getting paid, so they are not going to cost any extra apart from travel. I am not sure of the staffing requirements, but I do not imagine that it will be a huge amount of money compared to the benefit that we will hopefully gain from this. Therefore I will be supporting the inquiry going ahead. I hope that the committee can do their best work and come up with useful recommendations that will improve the way that we manage bushfires and their aftermath and the other issues that are going to be tackled by the inquiry when it goes ahead.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (16:49): I firmly believe that this is one of the most important issues facing our regional communities at this time, and I completely and fully support the motion to present and inquire into the points raised by Mr McGowan today. This has been a collaboration of work through many shadows: Danny O’Brien, the Shadow Minister for Emergency Services; you, Mr McGowan; me as well for public land management; and many others. I thank them all for working constructively and I thank the crossbench for their constructive discussions with Mr McGowan, Mrs McArthur and others.

We spent a number of hours yesterday very appropriately reflecting on the impact of out-of-control bushfires through this 2026 summer season and the horrendous impact that these fires have had on lives, livelihoods, infrastructure, homes, stock, farms and businesses in our beautiful regional towns. Of course bushfires are not only the space of the regions. They can nip into the suburban landscape as well, and it is just lucky that it has not happened so far.

I want to re-place on record my gratitude to all of those people, all the CFA volunteers who run towards danger with their equipment, their skills, their passion, their understanding and their ageing trucks. They run toward forest fires and they work with all the skill and effort they can to suppress them. I want to thank all of the other staff that sit in behind that. I could reiterate all of my speech from yesterday, but I will not because there is plenty to talk about. Thank you to the volunteers. Thank you to all the community organisations. Thank you to the departmental staff that work so hard. Thank you to Victoria Police. Thank you, thank you, thank you on this.

It is for this reason that we need to interrogate, investigate, analyse and lay on the table in this Parliament the truth in an inquiry by a committee of which I have been a member for now 11 years, the Environment and Planning Committee, to investigate, analyse and tease out the truth of these fires.

You will hear me say this regularly: Australia and our state of Victoria have evolved with fire in the landscape. That is a natural phenomenon. We then overlay a change in regimes over thousands of years. In the last 200 years we have put people in the landscape and we intertwine people and the environment. Unless we continue to be responsible about how to mitigate fire and reduce fire in the landscape, put in prevention – creative prevention, thoughtful prevention and physical prevention – in our landscape, we are going to continue to have to back-end bushfires with huge suppression, huge personnel and infrastructure and equipment into bushfire when it exists. And then we have to present recovery, and not only recovery in a financial sense, which is a huge burden on taxpayers – there is no doubt about it – but recovery of the psyche of many of those people whose lives have been so drastically impacted. We owe it to all of those Victorians to investigate this.

We have heard some quips about the IGEM role. It was a Liberal and National government that introduced the inspector-general of emergency management. But the difference here is that this institution, the IGEM, reports to the Minister for Emergency Services. It does not report to the Victorian public, it reports to the minister first, and it sits within the Department of Justice and Community Safety. That is the way it was set up. It was set up to analyse a very important issue. But this issue over time – over decades –we have seen it expand, and we need that more forensic detail. We need to be able to have public hearings with a breadth of people. We need to be able to cross-examine as members of Parliament. As limited as we are in our knowledge, we need to be able to forensically investigate this. That is a broader spectrum than the inspector-general. I appreciate the work that Emily Phillips does, but it is a case to a certain degree of an internal audit within the system we need across the board. This motion that Mr McGowan has read through covers a lot of that breadth.

We need to talk about and understand former inquiries. The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires is a supremely important issue that I do not believe this government has paid homage to enough, reflected on enough or bothered to implement. A royal commission, again, hears from a broad range of experts, from on-the-ground locals to scientists from across the board. They have made recommendations that this government has wiped. The government have gone, ‘No, we’ve changed our mind. We’re going to introduce a thing called Safer Together.’ Well, at the moment the government is not presenting information around Safer Together. It is not presenting the fuel-driven risk that is now 18 months old. We want to go and ask what is happening on the ground. One of the recommendations from the bushfires royal commission, one I state often, is recommendation 56 about a long-term program of prescribed burns – 5 per cent as a rolling target – on public land. Then the next one is that the department – it has changed its name now – should report annually on prescribed burn outcomes in a manner that meets public accountability and objectives. Surely one of the objectives of public accountability should be around saying that we are doing the work to protect this state in a better capacity. We will never remove fire from the landscape. We need to learn to live with fire, but we need to be able to take the wise advice from previous recommendations and work out how they can be remodelled into this state.

I could speak ad nauseam about fuel reduction, but what I will say is that we have got an amazing group of people there who work on this. There needs to be respect for what they do, and I know my colleague Danny O’Brien raised an issue that I have been working with him and others on about paying the staff. Now, there is more to say on that, but it is about paying the staff of that plant panel – think civil contractors – who have been told that they would have work. Many of them have not been paid. The minister said into Hansard, ‘We’re about fighting bushfires, not about doing the book work’ – something like that. You ask contractors to go out into the forest and use their plant and equipment – their feller bunchers and their harvesters and bulldozers – to take down dangerous trees to help with the suppression of these bushfires, and then the minister says that. Look, to his credit, he said, ‘I’ll go and check, but we’re not too worried about book work.’ Well, we all get paid every week. These people need to be paid and respected, and I hope the minister comes back with some positive results in that space, I really do. I am not saying it is his fault per se, but a good government looks at the holistic nature of not only mitigation and suppression but also recovery and paying those people that you contract to help you out. I do not think that is too much to ask.

In relation to some of these other things that the government wants to insert, I am technically not opposed to them, because I reckon there has been some impact of misinformation that we have heard from the government, so what works for the cat can work for the goose as well. I am not opposed to seeing this. Let us unpack some of the minister’s own misinformation – or just lack of knowledge – but also the Premier’s. I will wait and see where we go with that one.

The other thing is the impact on native wildlife. Every bushfire has an impact. We saw in the 2019–20 fires it was actually billions of wildlife, flora and fauna, destroyed and incinerated. That goes on top of livestock, which is just horrendous. I support this motion. This is a very important motion, and I will be more than happy to stay up late and get up early to make sure this inquiry succeeds in building capacity and understanding and direction for government.

 John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (16:59): I rise to speak on this motion seeking an inquiry into the bushfire season which we all experienced over January. As someone who represents an inner-city electorate, my community was not at the centre of where the fires were devastating bushland, farmland, and rural properties, towns and regional cities. But so many of us in Southern Metro know somebody who does live out in those areas who had to evacuate, whose community was damaged, whose business was disrupted or whose children were terrified or worried day after day that their community would be next. Listening to the emergency broadcasting and the ABC, one could hear the pain in the voices of those who were ringing up and reporting on what they had seen on the ground – people whose properties had been destroyed, with the streets they had known for decades made unrecognisable.

Both the state and federal governments have made solemn commitments to the communities affected by this summer’s fires that they will not be abandoned and that we will help them rebuild.

As we are all aware, at the end of January the Allan Labor government announced jointly with the federal government a package worth $160 million in recovery support, which came on top of the $210 million already announced. This additional funding will be used to support regional communities, households and businesses in the difficult and long work of recovering and rebuilding in the aftermath of the disaster. This funding is being delivered on top of the more than $210 million already announced in relief and recovery supports for Victorians affected by these destructive blazes, including emergency relief payments, grants for primary producers, access to emergency accommodation and support for councils. The Allan Labor government has also secured an additional $112 million that will expand the state coordinator clean-up program with Forge Solutions. It will be available to uninsured and underinsured residential homes and structures, as well as businesses and community assets like sporting facilities and community halls. There will also be another $200 million for the emergency recovery support program. This government understands that Victorians need support throughout the recovery journey, helping people affected by bushfires access government support programs and the services they need.

The Victorian Labor government has made it easy for people when it comes to staying alert and updated about the risk of fires across the state. I want to take a moment here to acknowledge all those people in rural communities that have been dealing with the harsh reality of bushfires in this state and our hardworking emergency services and their continued efforts to prepare and respond to fires across Victoria. The 2024–25 annual report for the CFA demonstrates that funding has reached its highest level in five years. Grant funding to the CFA has increased by nearly $22 million under the Victorian Labor government. Its total income is up by more than $26 million, with the CFA’s assets base growing by about $106 million.

The further $80 million provided for fire season preparedness shows the Allan Labor government’s commitment to more funding for volunteers, more equipment on the ground and more investment in the stations, trucks and tools that Victorians rely on during emergencies, supporting early deployment of regional aerial firefighting, helping increase the CFA’s water storage across the state and improving fire danger signs across Victoria. On top of this the Allan Labor government has announced a $40 million rolling stock replacement program for the CFA, building on the almost 100 vehicles currently on the production line and the 95 vehicles recently delivered to brigades across the state. It was under the Victorian Labor government that the VicEmergency app and hotline were created, keeping more Victorians safe and informed, allowing live tracking of blazes and monitoring risks to local communities. This streamlined all emergency warnings into one place in 2016 through a single service.

I believe every member in this chamber can agree on keeping Victorians safe. The Allan Labor government remains steadfast in its commitment to investing in frontline workers and resources, supporting volunteers, strengthening aviation capacity and deployment, modernising land and fuel management, embracing new technologies and building climate resilience, always with the aim of protecting life, property, flora and fauna. The Allan Labor government will continue to build a safer, more resilient Victoria today and for the years to come, and we look to support Victorians in the aftermath of another challenging fire season. Victorians should feel confident that this government is dedicated to ensuring the safety of everyone during the recovery process.

Last year the Allan Labor government set out to safeguard schools, ensuring they were well prepared. 345 campuses across 330 government schools were granted $8.4 million to carry out essential maintenance work as part of the bushfire preparedness vegetation program. The program was introduced in 2018 to assist schools to undertake their risk reduction practices of vegetation clearing around school buildings prior to bushfire seasons.

The Allan Labor government is committed to backing our hardworking CFA volunteers, ensuring they have new fit-for-purpose vehicles, enhanced technology and tailored safety gear. We will back the people that protect our vulnerable communities in difficult times by ensuring they have the tools and the protection they need. Victoria is one of the most bushfire-prone places on earth. Preparedness must be ongoing, adaptive and grounded in evidence, and the Allan Labor government are doing exactly that.

Over the past decade, Victorians have shifted from a simplistic, hectare-based model of fire reduction to a risk-reduction model, one that was directly recommended by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. This model enables Forest Fire Management Victoria to prioritise areas close to communities, key escape routes, regional towns and high-risk corridors. It allows a combination of fuel reduction burns with mechanical works, slashing, mulching and targeted economic burns. Local communities are involved in decision-making about bushfire management all year round. This means understanding what these communities care about most and working with them to determine local solutions to reduce the fire risk. This approach sees the movement from a hectare target for planned burns to a risk-reduction target for bushfire management. It means a more integrated approach across public and private land, with fuel management just one of the range of different management actions that are taken to protect lives, homes, jobs and the environment. Fuel management today is more effective and strategic because of these changes, protecting more Victorian communities and keeping what is important to keep them safe. That is why we continue to work closely with communities, local brigades, councils and emergency leaders to plan, prepare and adapt to best support fire-prone communities. We want Victorians to feel supported, confident and equipped with the information they need.

Those opposing this government refuse to acknowledge the reason for the increased severity of the season and want to double down by pushing back progress for cleaner energy. They want to talk about risk reduction but do not want to comment on how these outcomes stem from larger environmental changes which mean regional communities have faced floods, storms and bushfires with increasing frequency. Risk reduction is crucial in avoiding uncontrolled blazes – that is true – and the Allan Labor government will continue to take serious, evidence-based and climate-informed approaches to the risk of bushfires. Victoria’s climate is changing, our fire seasons are becoming longer, hotter and more unpredictable, planned burning windows are narrowing, fuel is curing earlier and severe weather events are becoming more frequent. The Allan Labor government continues to strengthen emergency services, choosing to invest in the people facing these blazes, delivering the Victorian climate resilience strategy, which supports local councils to prepare for climate impacts, investing in community-based resilience programs across regional Victoria and expanding fire prevention programs in high-risk local government areas.

Preparedness also does not just happen at the government or agency level; it happens in households and neighbourhoods and communities. That is why our government is continuing to strengthen information access, local fire planning initiatives and targeted engagement programs. The Allan Labor government is also delivering vital water security for drought-affected farmers in western Victoria. Construction is now underway for the Mininera rural pipeline project. This project will enhance firefighting capabilities, with 10 hydrants and seven firefighting tanks to be installed within the project. The Allan Labor government knows preparedness is not reactive; it is sustained and, importantly, it is an approach that adapts to the weather change and area. We cannot eliminate the risk of bushfires entirely, but we can ensure that Victoria is prepared by supporting protective management practices. Under this government, that work will never stop.

The Allan Labor government understands the importance of climate change and the need to work in a broader framework within the states, territories and the Commonwealth. Importantly, we need to fight the misinformation being spread across Victoria about these bushfires. The Allan Labor government understand the impacts of climate change on the natural environment and will continue to fight misinformation around these natural disasters so Victorians are informed and can be kept safe.

 Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (17:09): I rise to make a short contribution to this in support of the motion. It was interesting listening to a few of the contributions earlier. Ms Bath probably put up one of the best reasons for this inquiry as opposed to just the IGEM report, which is that IGEM does not report to Parliament directly – it reports to the minister, and the minister goes through – while this does. There is a little bit of me that wonders why this is not an ongoing reference, so every year the Parliament does their own investigations. Is it doubling up? I do not know. But if it is out in the open, it is done, we have public hearings, and we can talk about it. It is a lot easier to talk about it here. It does not have to go through a process and maybe pop out one day when the minister of the time feels it is appropriate; it is out there and ongoing.

I do not have a lot of time, so I am going to go through some of the notes I have made. Part (2) is the causes and circumstances of bushfires. I was honoured to go and have a look at some stuff at Swinburne University in Hawthorn a little while ago. It was mostly about using AI-type technology to predict floods.

But I was thinking about it and remembering the technology they were using. It may also be possible for that to be used, maybe not to predict bushfires as such, because that is hard, but certainly to predict which way they are likely to go. There is a lot of meteorological data that goes out there. There is a lot of satellite data, there is a lot of data in how fires burn, topographical issues and things like that. I am not on that committee, so maybe I am making work for them, but it is something that they could definitely think about approaching. Is there a way of at least getting an idea where a fire is going to go? And by using the computing power we have today, we can have it in a usable amount of time. Obviously, you cannot rely on that sort of technology, because things change, but even just being occasionally ahead of the curve is going to work.

Part (3) is about the funding, equipment and appliances for the CFA, FRV and Forest Fire Management Victoria. There are obviously ongoing problems with volunteerism across the board, but the CFA are feeling it too. I will not thrash away at the problems that they have had in the recent years that have caused people to feel a little less than appreciated at the CFA. But there are people turning up, and we need to make sure that they are talked to and listened to when it comes to this. Forest Fire Management Vic are a bunch that we do not hear a lot of, but they are normally out there in public land doing the hard work along with everyone else. I too sometimes forget about them, and I need to do better with that.

Part (4) is:

the emergency responses to control and contain the fires, including adequacy of resources and communications …

That brings up the problem that the FRV have been having in the new tunnel. There are also black spots just with hilly country; it is easy to get black spots. Again, there is new technology that we can be using and looking at that can help, because communication also saves lives. If someone knows that there is a fire front coming – because obviously when it is really full-on it is smoky and you are not really sure – they can get a radio message and they can deal with it.

Part (5) is:

the resilience of critical services and infrastructure, such as electricity, water and telecommunications …

I reckon this is probably the most important one of the lot, because fires will happen. We get dry lightning; we get all sorts of things that create a fire. We deal with the fire as a community, and then we leave it more or less to the insurance companies and some of the government departments to work on resilience. There are a lot of people feeling left out, and whether that is just a feeling or a reality is something that we need to be looking at. We need to get the recovery going faster and better.

There is another part, just before I run out of time. It is a strange one, but it works back into some of my core stuff – the impact on the environment, including native wildlife. One of the problems we had in the 2009 bushfires was that the regrowth created the perfect storm for deer to breed. Right now the amount of land that was burnt is close to that of the 2009 fires, so we need to get on the front foot now. That does not mean declaring them a pest, because you cannot hunt pests in a national park, you cannot use dogs, you cannot use hound hunting. Farmers will then be responsible for pests, and farmers can already do everything they need. So it is about management, not just feel-good carry-on, which is the inevitable ‘let’s call them a pest’. Right now we have got all this ability to make sure that when the regrowth comes we can use contractors, we can use organisations, we can use recreational shooters – whatever makes people feel good. But we need to get on to the population before it becomes a problem. But on the whole I support this motion, and I hope everyone else does too.

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (17:14): I appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of this motion. I think it is very important. I am a member of the Environment and Planning Committee, but the decision is not made just because I am a member. It is up to this chamber to support the move for an inquiry, and I think it speaks to the value of committees and the work they do with a range of different political parties represented to actually have witnesses and do a deep dive into the issues and to make recommendations to government.

I know from observing what has happened in these recent bushfires that the elements reflected in this motion are so important. Talking about overgrown roadsides and everything, I remember getting a text from a person who lost their house in the Harcourt fires, and it says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

My property backed directly onto the rail track. The grass and scrub buried behind my fence was 6 to 12 foot high. Crown land beside me, also 6 foot high. They never, ever came out to maintain their land. I think I saw a slasher there six years ago.

We have talked about ageing tankers. I know I have raised that in this chamber. Also I remember speaking to fire brigade volunteers with the CFA. They took a trip to Shepparton on the highway there in open cabin – people on the back, volunteers, in over 40-degree heat and fibreglass seats. That is the situation we are putting our volunteers in. I also spoke with other brigade members who talked about the radio failures of communication and how dangerous that was in the situation that they were in.

I know we need to talk more about the facilities that there are in our regions. Nick McGowan spoke earlier about Bendigo and the incredible waste of money there and the failure to redevelop that fire station that is not fit for purpose – and an empty station, a ghost station with $2.5 million or more spent on that and it still remains empty – while we have got brigades like Axe Creek that do not have facilities and are washing their materials in buckets out the front of their station. And also the Charlton fire brigade is divided between different locations, so members have to go and get gear from one and then go offsite to access the tanker, wasting critical minutes. I know Charlton did have fires that damaged I think it was 15 farms or so in December.

There are so many issues. I know there are power outages – I talked about them in the chamber today – and the telecommunications dropouts that occur across our region. We saw the impact on Mount Alexander of the loss of ABC radio because the telecommunication towers there were damaged during the fires. So there was no live TV for some time as well, which had a big impact on the area.

I have also heard discussed in the halls of this chamber the impact on wildlife, and I know trained personnel that were not permitted to go out and assist the injured wildlife. So there are definitely issues that need to be addressed, along with livestock that urgently need to be euthanised. I have spoken to farmers that have had to deal with horrendous situations and felt completely cut off because of road closures. I think it is important to think that after the floods we did have a parliamentary inquiry and I was a part of that, and I know my colleagues Ms Lovell and Ms Bath were also part of that inquiry. It is so important to reflect, to look back on what has happened and to think, ‘What can we do better?’ And that is why I really encourage this house to support this motion.

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:19): Well, of course I support Mr McGowan’s motion to establish an inquiry into the 2026 summer bushfires, because what we witnessed and reflected upon yesterday was not just a natural disaster. There was also, unfortunately, some degree of failed preparedness, resourcing and accountability. The inquiry we propose is not a formality or a box-ticking exercise. It is the only serious way to ensure that what went wrong is identified, confronted and not repeated.

The scale of devastation certainly demands our attention. Over 110,000 hectares of farmland have been affected – more than half a million hectares of land in total. More than 41,000 livestock have perished, including nearly 32,000 sheep. One man, cattle farmer Max Hobson, tragically lost his life defending his property near Seymour.

[The Legislative Council report is being published progressively.]