Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:31): In the Environment and Planning Committee we have completed and tabled this week our report into the 2026 Victorian bushfires. As we all know, in the cut and thrust of a committee there is evidence presented, submissions are held and had and there is negotiation and sometimes confrontation in terms of the final contents of the report. That was the case in this report on the bushfires. Now, as diligent committees do, we took submissions, but we also went out into rural and regional Victoria.
We started our hearings in Colac. We went on site out to Tomahawk Creek, and it was very clear. We stood on a gravel track, and there was a farmer who stayed during the Otway fires in January. We were in situ, and on one side there was a forest that had had a preparatory burn, a preventative, prescribed burn conducted by Forest Fire Management Victoria some 12 months before, and on the other side there was not – there was a normal forest with heavy fuel load on the floor. And what we saw there – and this was testimony from the farmer that stayed – is where there had been preparatory burns, prescribed burns that took the heavy fuel load off the forest floor, the fire came up the ridge, came through that heavy thicketed forest and actually went into the preparatory burn forest but then petered out. It then got to a stage where our dedicated fire services, the volunteers – and there might have been Forest Fire Management there as well – were able to diminish and contain that fire, because of a prescribed burn.
This government in the last decade has burnt on average around 1.4 per cent of the public forest estate. And we heard in Ruffy, when we went and sat with people in the Ruffy community hall, that across the road a house was burnt out and around the corner farms and farm buildings were burnt out. We heard from those fantastic, incredible people that there is not enough fuel reduction being done. We heard that the roadside vegetation acted like a wick, and we heard that there were not enough firebreaks. We heard in Ruffy, when people came and spoke to us, that the CFA volunteers rang incident control and said, ‘Send more strike teams,’ and do you know what the incident control centre said? They said, ‘We can’t. Ultimately, you’re on your own.’
Those incident control centres were under pressure because of this government’s so-called reform – I call it a restructure. There were not enough commanders and assistant fire chief officers in those incident control centres at the time, and that was evident from the two reports that we received on questions on notice from the CFA. To this committee, and it is published in our minority report, the CFA presented one report on 4 June, and that was a fulsome 33-page document that showed how, because of this new arrangement presented and passed by this chamber and the government – not by us; we opposed it – there were insufficient people with that content knowledge, that experience at the top, directing these fires. So when those firefighters, people who work on the farms, people who live on farms, had to make a choice between defending their farm or getting in an aged truck – 27 years old those trucks are, with one capacity front cabin and one where they sit in the back in the open air, other than a shield – they made that decision to go and fight, and they were told, ‘Go it on your own because a strike team just might not come.’
This is what was made evident in this inquiry. I invite people to have a look. There were some great things that were able to be put into the majority report, but we ultimately could not support it because there was a whole lot of evidence from eyewitnesses. What did Labor and the Greens do and what about the casting vote – it is in the transcript there – by the chair? Often it was sanitised, with the government submission coming through and through, and some of this very important information was left. I invite everyone to read the minority report. There are some compelling recommendations. I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all of those Victorians who again and again and again go into the heart and soul of a fire to save their communities.