How the machinery of government is failing fire fighters

THERE’S fire trucks on the fire grounds spraying water, and if they’re available, Emergency Management Victoria will send in their fleet of helicopters and planes to bomb the bushfire from the air.

There’s also an “extraordinary” group of contractors who come in with their heavy machinery to cut firebreaks and clear a way through the smoldering mess so that the fires can be made safe.

Everyone knows how important they are to the fire-fighting effort, including it seems the Minister for Environment, Steve Dimopoulos, according to his response to a question from the Leader of the Nationals and Gippsland South MLA Danny O’Brien in State Parliament on Wednesday, February 4.

However, according Mr O’Brien, there’s a fatal flaw in the government’s high regard for these contractors – they’re not paying them!

In fact, there’s a $15 million bill for the contractors outstanding.

“My question is to the Minister for Environment. Why have contractors with heavy plant and equipment engaged to fight bushfires in Victoria not been paid, with an estimated $15 million now outstanding?” asked Mr O’Brien.

The Minister couldn’t say why they hadn’t been paid, but to his credit, offered to find out.

“But it does give me an opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary work, capacity, expertise and equipment that those contractors have, which have been extraordinarily handy. This government decided to end native timber harvesting at the beginning of 2024. We retained the expertise of those contractors for exactly this type of emergency,” said Minister Dimopoulos.

“They are out there assisting right now, opening up roadways and access ways, clearing debris and trees that are impacting the free flow of those communities that have been impacted so severely by the bushfires,” he said.

But Mr O’Brien said there was a simple reason why they hadn’t been paid.

“The contractors have been told that Forest Fire Management Victoria has not paid them because they do not have the staff to process time sheets. When will contractors be paid?” said Mr O’Brien again.

The Minister said he would check on the veracity of the question but noted that “good men and women of FFMVic” were doing what everyone expected of them, fighting fires, no necessarily concentrating on their bookkeeping.

How long the heavy vehicle contractors keep turning up without getting paid might be a question for them.

Mr O’Brien posed the question on a day he spent probing emergency services funding, particularly to the SES and CFA, trying to tie the government down on cuts to funding and how the billions raised from the new Emergency Services Levy will be distributed.

He said that while the government claimed to have increased CFA funding by $22 in the past year, it had made significant cuts to funding in the years prior, with the result that many brigades were left with old and failing equipment to fight the disastrous bushfires, particularly in the state’s north east.