Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) has missed its response time target for structural fires every single year since it was created in 2020, and the suburbs that were supposed to benefit most are getting the worst service.
The agency is supposed to reach 90 per cent of structural fires within seven minutes and 42 seconds. It's only hit that mark once — in the September quarter of 2020, right after it replaced the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and took over 38 regional and outer metro areas from the Country Fire Authority (CFA).
Since then, it's fallen short for 21 consecutive quarters. The most recent data, from November to December last year, shows FRV responded to 88 per cent of fires within the benchmark.
"During this period there has been limited or no new additional fire trucks commissioned with additional fire crews to address the growth and increase in calls and the complexity of some calls," said Craig Lapsley, Victoria's former emergency management commissioner.
The worst-performing stations are all in fast-growing outer suburbs. Caroline Springs responded to just 44 per cent of structural fires on time. Tarneit managed 58 per cent, Point Cook 67 per cent, Broadmeadows 67 per cent, Frankston 72 per cent, Melton 73 per cent, and Cranbourne 75 per cent.
Except for Broadmeadows, every single one of those stations was previously run by the CFA before the 2020 reforms.
The consequences were tragically clear last month. Three-year-old Jordan Dashwood died in a house fire on Newbury Street in Werribee. His father Jeremy was rushed to hospital with serious burns after trying to save him.
The fire was inside FRV's Tarneit station response area, but Tarneit's only truck and crew were at a car crash. A CFA volunteer vehicle from Hoppers Crossing got there after 10 minutes — already past the benchmark. An FRV truck from Point Cook arrived after 11 minutes.
FRV's budget has ballooned by 33 per cent since 2020, hitting $1.227 billion last financial year. Employee expenses alone ate up $953 million of that — up from $756 million in its first year. The United Firefighters Union (UFU) secured big pay rises after a long industrial battle that triggered a political crisis for then-premier Daniel Andrews and led to the whole restructure.
But UFU secretary Peter Marshall says the funding hasn't followed the plan.
"Since Fire Rescue Victoria was established in 2020, not one new FRV fire station has been built. Not one community … has been brought inside the FRV fire district," Marshall said.
He pointed to FRV's own data as proof of "underinvestment by the Allan government in fire stations and firefighters to ensure the protection of life and property, despite the growing demand."
The union is now locked in negotiations for a new pay deal. It's also fighting to suppress a report from Operation Richmond — a corruption watchdog investigation into the dispute that was supposed to be released last month after years of legal battles.
Craig Lapsley said FRV is facing the same problems the CFA had before the reforms: booming populations in new housing estates, poor road networks, and traffic congestion. On top of that, crews are being pulled away to respond to medical emergencies and road crashes, which eats into their ability to fight fires.
When Andrews announced the overhaul in 2017, he said it would modernise a system "largely unchanged since the 1950s" and "ensure Victorians can rely on modern and local fire services to keep them safe, regardless of where they live."
Eight years later, the data says otherwise.