Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:37): (2329) My adjournment is for the Minister for Emergency Services, and the action I seek is for the minister to end this self-made crisis inside the Country Fire Authority by reversing real terms funding cuts. For weeks Victorians have been treated with complete contempt by the Premier and her ministers on this issue. The Premier gaslit the independent Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, claiming the latest annual report was late because of delays at their end. This forced the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office to pen a media release to the Australian, correcting the record. When Mrs McArthur took the Treasurer to task last sitting week on the funding cuts, Minister Symes continued to perpetuate the big lie that funding has gone up every single year, completely contradicting the Parliamentary Budget Office. The PBO confirmed that grant funding fell every single year between 2020 and 2021, 2023 and 2024, with a total drop of $12.1 million. For a Treasurer who once asked a room full of businesspeople what their favourite tax was, I am not sure I will be relying on Ms Symes’s arithmetic for this. While grant income 2024–2025 is higher than the previous year on paper, it is still $55 million less than 2020, after taking four years of inflation into account.

The fleet is old, outdated and underfunded, with hundreds of CFA trucks aged between 25 and 30 years. I have seen people sitting on the back, outside, on their way to bushfires. Volunteer numbers have fallen off a cliff, with operational volunteers ageing and dropping by over 7000 between 2015 and 2016, and 2024 and 2025. Most CFA volunteers are over 40 and a huge proportion are over 60, with few young people joining. Brigades are heading into high-risk fire seasons, and we have seen that with ageing tankers, insufficient PPE and stations that are literally falling apart. While spending on PPE and equipment fell by $8.3 million, spending on internal IT consultants and contractors jumped by $16 million. The Premier is now trying to hire a new CFA spin doctor on a salary of up to $430,000 a year of taxpayers money – a spin doctor, not firefighters, not equipment, not training. And how does the government thank our CFA? A $3 billion emergency services tax on volunteers, farmers, small businesses and home owners of course. While regional Labor MPs, like Martha Haylett, have gone into hiding over the tax, we have some brave metropolitan MPs who are out there championing it and its supposed virtues. My counterpart Mr Galea recently accused us of peddling misinformation on the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. Well, I dare Mr Galea to repeat that to our constituents in the south-east who are footing the bill for your government’s financial mismanagement. We have also had Mr Batchelor – (Time expired)