Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:20): I also rise to speak on the Environment and Planning Committee’s report on the inquiry into the 2026 summer fires across Victoria. I want to start by acknowledging the communities that were affected by these fires. There are a number of communities affected throughout the state, but in my electorate particularly Longwood, Harcourt, Walwa and Yarroweyah. Also I want to mention Markwood and Goomalibee, which suffered bushfires this summer as well but were not necessarily elevated to the level of government response as the other firegrounds were.

I want to express my gratitude to all community members, organisations, local governments and other authorities who took the time to prepare submissions and to appear as witnesses at hearings, and I want to acknowledge the significant difficulty that they did that under. Many of the individuals were still trying to put their own lives back together, as Mrs Broad has so adequately laid out, but they took the time to make important contributions to this inquiry so that people in the future should not go through the same experience they have.

The fires this summer took the life of one of my constituents, and I extend my condolences to the family of Maxwell Hobson, who lost his life on the Longwood fireground. They destroyed 451 homes, damaged a further 29 and destroyed 1110 outbuildings. Approximately 440,000 hectares of land burnt. They impacted on 150,000 hectares of agricultural land. More than 45,000 livestock died in the fires. There was approximately 9625 kilometres of fencing lost. More than 40,000 tonnes of hay or silage was destroyed. Commercial properties were destroyed, tourism and community infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, and there was significant disruption to farming enterprises and other local businesses as well as significant loss of wildlife. So you can see that there was enormous impact by these fires.

The majority report makes 93 findings and 80 recommendations. What we heard was that, despite numerous warnings and multiple reviews, audits and inquiries, Victoria entered the 2025–26 fire season unprepared. We heard that both our major fire services, CFA and FRV, have ageing firefighting fleets that are no longer fit for purpose. We heard that volunteer numbers in the CFA have declined over the past decade. We heard of communication failures and command shortcomings, infrastructure vulnerabilities and emergency management weaknesses. We heard that all of these things affected the response operations, and it is communities that have borne the consequences. Those consequences have been adequately outlined by Mrs Broad.

I commend the majority report, which largely outlines the problems that my communities faced and that fire services were presented with as the fires engulfed much of Victoria. But most of all, I would encourage Victorians to read the minority report which includes much of the information that the government and Greens members voted to exclude from the majority report. The minority report includes 19 findings and 30 recommendations that were missing from the majority report. These focus on prevention, response and recovery. It also includes information the government tried to hide from Victorians. The time allocated to asking questions of government agencies and the department was inadequate to fully question the ministers, so a number of questions that were asked were taken on notice and I submitted an additional 34 questions. The answers to those questions were provided to the committee on 4 June, then on 5 June the CFA followed up to say that they were recalling those answers. The reason for this was they had been told they needed to be reviewed by the Department of Justice and Community Safety, the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office and the cabinet committee. This is direct government interference with evidence given to the committee, and the responses that were received afterwards were significantly edited. I would encourage everyone to read those two documents, which are also included in the minority report.