Fire services we can rely on

Firefighters and fire service workers keep us safe in house fires, road crashes, hazardous materials incidents and rescues. As the climate crisis brings hotter summers and more severe bushfire weather, we will need them more than ever. Yet the frontline fleet is being run into the ground.

A majority of Fire Rescue Victoria's trucks are now past FRV's own end-of-life policy, and some are decades old. Old appliances break down more often, spend more time off the road, and can no longer be repaired with new parts, so crews are left searching wrecking yards. Under the former Metropolitan Fire Brigade's rolling replacement program, the fleet was kept young, reliable and predictable to budget for. Victoria now relies largely on a single interstate manufacturer, and new appliance designs take years to deliver.

The workforce is also being treated badly. FRV has spent millions of dollars of public money fighting its own workers' conditions in court, while firefighters have gone years without a pay increase. Victorian Socialists believe fire and emergency services are an essential public good, to be planned and funded for community safety, not starved, privatised or used as an industrial battleground.

What we think

1. Fire and emergency services are essential public services and must be publicly owned, properly funded and run for community safety, not profit.
2. Firefighter and community safety depends on reliable equipment. Appliances must be replaced before their reliability declines, not when failures happen.
3. Firefighters and fire service workers, including communications controllers, call-takers and dispatchers, equipment and communications technicians, trainers, mechanics and corporate staff, deserve decent pay, secure conditions and strong union representation. Governments should not spend public money fighting them in court.
4. Fire services must be planned ahead for population growth and climate risk, with stations and capacity built and staffed where people live, paid for by developers who profit from new suburbs.
5. Fire service functions should never be outsourced or privatised.

We'll fight to

Fleet and equipment

1. Reintroduce an annually funded rolling fleet replacement program for FRV, aligned to its own end-of-life policy, with orders placed early enough to allow for manufacturing lead times.
2. Commit immediate capital funding to remove the most degraded appliances from service first, without reducing firefighter or community safety.
3. Require FRV to report publicly to Parliament each year on fleet age, breakdowns and replacement progress, independently verified.
4. Keep equipment maintenance, protective equipment servicing and communications technical work in-house, with properly resourced public workshops and technicians.

Public manufacturing

1. Establish publicly owned fire appliance manufacturing capacity in Victoria to end reliance on private, interstate suppliers, with guaranteed long-term orders and secure jobs under union-negotiated agreements.
2. Until that capacity is in place, secure long-term contracts and production slots in advance and introduce a second supplier so that delivery of new appliances is reliable.

Stations and planning

1. Fund fire services directly to build and refurbish stations in line with the fire services' Strategic Location Plan, especially in new and expanding areas.
2. Require emergency services to be included in all land and housing developments and in future planning policy, with costs covered through the developer social infrastructure levy, which can be expanded if need be.

Workers' pay and conditions

1. Restore the protections that have been removed, reduced or challenged by the Allan/Caroll government, and guarantee no worsening of current conditions for firefighters and corporate staff.
2. End FRV's litigation against its own workforce, honour enterprise agreements, and stop spending public money on legal action against firefighters and corporate staff in the Fair Work Commission.
3. Guarantee real wage rises above inflation for all firefighters and fire service workers.
4. Defend the right of firefighters and fire service workers to take industrial action without penalty.
5. Oppose the privatisation or outsourcing of any fire service function, including call-taking, dispatch and equipment maintenance.

Climate and regional Victoria

1. Introduce a properly funded, paid fire and emergency service for rural Victoria.
2. Retrofit low-income housing in bushfire-prone areas to meet Bushfire Attack Level standards, paid for by fossil fuel companies.
3. Fund fire services to meet the growing bushfire and extreme weather risk driven by climate change.

Funding

1. Fund the fleet replacement program from revenue raised through our taxes on billionaires, big business and property, and review the Fire Services Property Levy so that its cost doesn't fall on renters and low-income households.