Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria (VFBV)

Issues of Interest

Proposal For A Single Control Agency

CFA should be the lead agency for bushfires which threaten lives or private property.

Victoria’s bushfire command and control is currently shared between CFA and DSE. Unlike in other states, no one agency has overall responsibility and accountability for bushfires.

The lead agency for managing a bushfire is determined by the location of the bushfire – on private land the lead agency is the CFA and on public land the lead agency is DSE.

The application of these bushfire management arrangements is based around where the balance of the bushfire is located, not whether there is a risk to life and private property. This approach is seriously flawed. Bushfires do not respect the borders between public and private land.

The management of bushfire and bushfire risk throughout Victoria must have appropriate, clear and unambiguous lines of authority, responsibility and accountability that affords priority to the protection of life above all else.

The current system can create operational confusion because CFA and DSE have very different organisational management and command structures, staffing arrangements, operations systems and statutory objectives and priorities. Because of these differences and the time needed to consult and negotiate strategic and tactical approaches by the agencies for each fire they jointly confront, the current system lacks the agility to respond to fast moving bushfires spreading across public and private land and causes real ambiguities in authority, responsibility and accountability.

The potential for these problems must be removed. There must be a clear and unequivocal allocation of overall responsibility, command and control with complete clarity at every level of operations of who is in charge of managing the strategic response to the bushfire when lives are at risk.

This is necessary for operational effectiveness, proper accountability and public confidence.

The Bushfire Royal Commission has already identified the confusion that current arrangements created as to which agency and chief officer was responsible for issuing public warnings. It has recommended that the CFA’s Chief Officer be made legally responsible “to issue warnings and provide information to the community concerning the risk of bushfires”.

The statutory roles and therefore operational organisation of the CFA and DSE are different.

DSE is a land management agency. Its statutory mandate is the protection of forests, national parks and other protected public land. There is no statutory obligation imposed on DSE to protect lives or property from the threat of bushfire.

In stark contrast, CFA is an emergency management agency. It is the sole agency outside the MFB region (mainly inner and middle Melbourne suburbs) with statutory responsibility to protect lives and property.

Section 20 of the CFA Act 1958 makes plain that CFA’s sole objectives are the prevention and suppression of fires and the protection of life and property. It is mandated to “take all necessary steps” to prevent and suppress fires and to protect life and property.

By its statutory obligations and resulting organisation as an emergency service, CFA should be the statutory lead command agency for bushfires with clear responsibility and authority for the overall planning for and management of bushfires regardless of their location. Under this accountability model DSE would continue to have responsibility for fire prevention and suppression on public land but subject to overall strategic command and control by the CFA as the State’s lead bushfire agency. Similarly, incident controllers would continue to be appointed on the basis of the best person for the job regardless of their agency status.