A bushfire inquiry tabled in Parliament today has confirmed that years of funding cuts and mismanagement under the Victorian Labor Government have left the CFA short of volunteers and driving worn-out trucks, while the government kept the true state of the service’s readiness from scrutiny.
The 2026 summer fires burnt more than 440,000 hectares (a greater area than Black Saturday), destroyed 451 homes and 1,110 outbuildings, and killed more than 45,000 livestock with the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee identifying a stunning lack of resources available to combat the devastation.
Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Minister for Emergency Services, Danny O’Brien, said the report was a damning indictment of Labor’s stewardship and lack of transparency around Victoria’s fire services.
“The Carroll Labor Government must respond to all 80 recommendations of the Committee immediately rather than hide behind a six-month deadline that stretches past November’s election and into the next bushfire season,” Mr O’Brien said.
Among the findings from the Committee’s report were:
- The number of CFA operational volunteers had fallen by 26 per cent over the past decade.
- 802 single cab tankers remained in the CFA fleet and would not be fully replaced until 2036, while South Australia has already phased its single cabs out.
- Around 650 CFA tankers still carried firefighters in exposed rear seating.
- Significant proportions of fleets were past their service life, with mechanical failures occurring during emergency responses.
- Fleet-wide defects meant part of the Forest Fire Management firefighting fleet was unavailable until March 2026.
- The CFA faces long-term command staff vacancy issues and a shortage of experienced incident controllers.
- Roadside vegetation management was inconsistent, poorly funded and without clear accountability, leaving fuel loads that hampered evacuation and firefighting.
- As of 1 May, only 28 of 241 eligible properties had been fully cleaned up.
It also revealed the CFA’s own readiness ahead of the fire season was “qualified”, with the government refusing to disclose the substance of those qualifications, or what was done about them, to the Committee.
“This report should embarrass the Labor Government. A 26 per cent drop in CFA volunteers in 10 years should set off alarm bells in every regional community in this state. Instead, Labor cut funding and hid the truth,” Mr O’Brien said.
“The Committee couldn’t even get a straight answer on the CFA’s own readiness attestation. If the government is confident in how prepared the CFA was, why won’t it say what the qualifications in that attestation actually were?
“Volunteers are still riding in 650 tankers with no rear cabin protection, and there are 802 single cab tankers in the fleet that won’t be fully phased out until 2036, meanwhile trucks are ageing past their use-by date and breaking down mid-response. This is what a decade of funding cuts looks like in the middle of a natural disaster and it is threatening lives and property.”
“An elected Liberal and Nationals Government will fund the CFA properly, put fleet replacement on a fixed and transparent schedule, and back our volunteers instead of running them into the ground.
“The Liberals and Nationals will scrap Labor’s emergency services tax and revert to the former fire services property levy model to ensure a fairer, more consistent funding model for our CFA.
“Regional Victoria deserves its fair share, especially when lives are on the line.”
