HUNDREDS of red fire trucks and yellow uniforms descended on Spring Street and parliament steps this morning in a continuing protest of the recently passed emergency services levy.
Fire fighters from South Gippsland, many of whom are farmers as well as CFA volunteers, joined politicians, union members, business owners and members of the general public calling on the State Government to ‘scrap the tax’, which will see levy charges double or triple for some.
Mark Bourke has been a volunteer firefighter for nearly 45 years with Mirboo North, and he travelled to Melbourne on the Allambee tanker, alongside many other Gippsland volunteers.
“CFA under this particular government has gone downhill, and whilst we're there for the community they’ve really kicked us from pillar to post and they don't care,” said Mark.
Mark applied for a new CFA station for Mirboo North over ten years ago, still with no result and now he is worried that regional crews will get even less.
“It's going to go and pay for Melbourne projects, not funding fire trucks and equipment as they say, but it's a tax on volunteers who are going and fighting fires. We're going to pay now to go and fight fires.”
“For the townies, that's probably not so bad. For the farmers, it is going to break them, particularly in the drought that we're in and those farmers, a lot of those farmers are volunteers as well.”
Although Mark said he will continue to fight fires to protect the community he will refuse to go to fires on public land, which is the consensus among many of the volunteers.
“I'm personally starting that from now, and bear in mind too, that most of the fires that do start on public land are the ones that end up getting out (of control) and creating major bush fires. So, we'll still look after the private property, however, government, public land, that's a different kettle of fish.”
According to Mark, more meetings among brigades will occur and protests will continue in the wake of this new levy.
“We'll continue until the election, unless they withdraw the tax,” he said.
“Even when a state election is called, if they haven't repealed it, we will go down to Melbourne and work alongside the United firefighter Union to campaign against the government in marginal seats, or the crossbench members too, that voted for the tax.”
Sister rallies were held in regional towns across the state, with many Gippslanders turning up to Morwell to also protest locally.
The emergency services levy was originally forecast to raise an extra $2.14 billion over the next three years to cover more emergency and disaster organisations rather than just the CFA and Fire Services Victoria.
Many of the CFA units vital to communities across Victoria have gone offline in protest, however most South Gippsland units will continue to stay online to protect our communities.
