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Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) is a fire and rescue service serving major urban areas across Victoria, Australia. FRV operates 85 fire stations with full-time staff firefighters, around half of which are in the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area, and the remainder in regional cities and large towns throughout the state. Many peri-urban and regional stations are co-located with volunteer brigades of the Country Fire Authority.

FRV was formed in 2020 by a merger of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, a fully professional service responsible for much of the Greater Melbourne area, with the career firefighters of the CFA, who had operated in "integrated" staff and volunteer brigades on the Melbourne urban fringe and in other centres. The changes were strongly supported by the United Firefighters Union, which represented paid firefighters in both services, and strongly opposed by Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, a peak body affiliated with most CFA brigades. In the years leading to the formation of FRV, the UFU and VFBV engaged in multiple acrimonious industrial disputes with the CFA, and fire services reform became a major issue in Victorian state politics, with the Labor state government aligned with the UFU, and the Coalition opposition, including the National country representatives, taking the side of VFBV.

History
With the passage of the Fire Brigades Act 1890 by the Parliament of Victoria, the colony of Victoria's fire services were divided into two components. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade, largely a paid professional force, was established to serve the Metropolitan Fire District, roughly encompassing the area within a ten-mile radius of the Melbourne CBD; and the volunteer brigades in remainder of the colony was placed under the control of the Country Fire Brigades Board. Several reforms to the fire services over the following half-century left this basic structure in place, and in 1958 the MFB and what had become the Country Fire Authority were re-established under their own Acts of Parliament to, respectively, provide full-time fire services to the MFD, and to establish, coordinate and fund fire brigades in the rest of the state, whether "permanent or volunteer".

The Acts provided for the boundaries of the Metropolitan Fire District to be reviewed and altered, and in the 1960s the MFD was expanded to cover most of what was then metropolitan Melbourne. It was, however, to be the last significant such expansion. From around the same time, the United Firefighters Union, which represented MFB employees, began to campaign for the amalgamation of MFB and CFA in combination with a significant expansion of the paid firefighting force.

Fire District Review Panel
Following the creation of Fire Rescue Victoria, the Victorian Government will establish the Fire District Review Panel. The panel will regularly review the Metropolitan Fire District and advise the Minister for Emergency Services on any changes to be made. The Minister will have the final decision to change the district boundaries. Currently, the Metropolitan Fire District is established by the Metropolitan Fire Brigades Act 1958. Any change to the district boundaries must either be by amendment to the act or by request of a municipal council. The district boundaries have not changed since the 1950s, although the capability to do this has existed in the CFA legislation, as has the ability to increase resources where needed using a scaling system to increase resources to support volunteers in urban centres. This scaling up has been removed under the reform and the only model allowed in future is either a fully volunteer or a fully career fire station, with no more integrated training and response which was endorsed (and recommended be strengthened) in the VBRC.

Governance
The Fire Rescue Victoria Act 1958, amended and retitled from the Metropolitan Fire Brigades Act 1958, establishes the Fire Rescue Commissioner as the head of a body corporate named Fire Rescue Victoria, the successor in law to the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board. The functions of FRV set out by the Act are: "to provide for fire suppression and fire prevention services in the Fire Rescue Victoria fire district; and

to provide for emergency prevention and response services in the Fire Rescue Victoria fire district; and

to implement the fire and emergency services priorities of the Government of Victoria; and

to provide operational and management support to the Country Fire Authority in consultation with and as agreed by the Authority... and

to carry out any other functions conferred on Fire Rescue Victoria by or under this Act or the regulations or any other Act or any regulations under that Act."

The Act also requires FRV to assist in the response to any major emergency within Victoria, in cooperation with other emergency service organisations and under the direction of Emergency Management Victoria (EMV). The Act grants FRV broad powers to carry out its functions as directed by the Commissioner. Additional powers and duties of FRV and the Commissioner are established by other legislation, including:
 * Electricity Safety Act 1998
 * Emergency Management Act 1986
 * Emergency Management Act 2013
 * Gas Safety Act 1997
 * Building Act 1993
 * Building Regulations 2018.

In the State Emergency Response Plan published by EMV, FRV is the control agency within the FRV Fire District for accidents, including gas leaks, hazardous materials incidents and collapses; fires and explosions; and transport, industrial, high angle and confined space rescues. It supports CFA with these incidents outside the FRV Fire District and other agencies as required.

The Fire Rescue Commissioner and any Deputy Commissioners are appointed by the Governor of Victoria on the advice of the Minister responsible for fire services, for a period of not longer than five years. The Minister may give the Commissioner general direction on policies and priorities of Fire Rescue Victoria but has no power to make operational or strategic decisions, such as on the location of fire stations or the conduct of firefighting operations.

Fire District Review Panel
The FRV Act establishes a three-member Fire District Review Panel required to report at least every four years, or on the request of the Minister, on whether the boundaries Fire Rescue Victoria Fire District should be altered to provide for appropriate emergency services coverage. Members of the Review Panel are required to have expertise in fire and emergency services policy, but must not be current members of a Victorian fire service, firefighters' union or volunteers' association.

The final decision on whether to alter the FRV Fire District boundaries is that of the Minister. However, any recommendations of the Review Panel must be made publicly available by both FRV and CFA, regardless of whether they are accepted.

The Fire District Review Panel mechanism was initially recommended by the Royal Commission into the 2009 bushfires. It is intended to provide an objective, independent decision-making process for determining where professional and volunteer firefighters operate, in order to alleviate some of the tensions which led to the formation of FRV. However, the initial FRV Fire District was not subject to the Review Panel process.

Emergency Services Infrastructure Authority
The Emergency Services Infrastructure Authority (ESIA) will be established following Fire Rescue Victoria. ESIA will oversee planning, project management, procurement, construction of new fire stations and upgrades to existing stations. It will oversee a $44m station building program for the CFA.

The establishment of ESIA will be subject to consultation with FRV, the CFA, the Victoria State Emergency Service, Life Saving Victoria and unions and other representative bodies.

Appliance overview
All FRV stations operate at least one pumper or pumper tanker. Aerial and specialist appliances are located across the Melbourne area and in many of the regional cities, from where they also provide support into CFA areas.

A system of modular "pods", carried by Transporters fitted with hydraulic lift arms, is also used to support specialised operations.

History of Legislation
The legislation was presented to the Victorian Upper house just before Easter 2018, and led to a record sitting to allow it to pass, including controversy over pairing of a cross bench member and accusations the Government was using the absence of a sick MP, an independent who was the casting vote on the legislation, to push through a vote in her absence by extending the sitting into Good Friday, which had never happened before. The legislation was defeated on the third reading on Easter Sunday. The bill was a "Disputed Bill" and could be considered after the next election by a committee known as the Dispute Resolution Committee in line with the Constitutional (Parliamentary Reform) Act 2003. The bill was reintroduced 29th May 2019, and passed through both houses 20th June.

Progress
The latest MFB EBA has been passed by Fair Work Australia, and is anticipated to be the template for the new FRV EBA. The EBA continues to contain the provisions that concerned its opponents and continues to concern them given FRV staff will transfer their industrial arrangements when seconded to CFA, raising concerns that those provisions will still impact the volunteers. While not mentioned in the 2019/2020 Victorian State Budget, a rise in the Fire Services Levy of 10% is widely anticipated in response to a rise in paid staff numbers, despite a previous government promise the levy would be frozen for two years after implementation. This levy is paid by all landholders and businesses in Victoria, with the country areas not being served by FRV being levied at a higher rate. The State Budget included an efficiency dividend of $1.8B across the public service, and it is unknown what the impact on FRV will be.