Sixty-five per cent of FRV’s current fleet is beyond its service life, and Victoria is repeatedly reaching crisis point because there are simply not enough spare fire trucks available when frontline appliances break down.
Against that backdrop, the announcement of a single new truck by Gavin Freeman is completely inadequate. One truck does not fix a fleet where 138 of approximately 213 appliances are already beyond their service life.
A stage-managed announcement of one new truck does nothing to address the underlying crisis. What Victoria needs is a properly funded, accelerated replacement program that gets ageing appliances off the road and restores a reliable pool of spare trucks across the state.
Firefighters and the Victorian community deserve more than political announcements — they deserve enough operational trucks to respond when they are needed.
