United Firefighters Union Victorian branch secretary Peter Marshall slams the Victorian government's legislation to replace the fire services levy. Video via AAP
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00:00What we're seeing here is a stunt, a stunt that is deplorable when you talk about the
00:06fire service having 40% of their trucks which are out of date, raising money that does nothing
00:12more than being deployed into other areas by robbing consolidated revenue on one hand,
00:18increasing the same amount of money if not more under the guise of a levy.
00:24Additional to that, the wording of the legislation results in a budget cut for Fire Rescue Victoria,
00:29it's 87.5% mandatory at the moment, and what we're seeing here is it's not exceeding 87.5%.
00:39Given the history of this government, given the lack of investment in the fire service,
00:43what we are going to see here is that each household will go from $190 fire levy to $254.
00:52At a time when Victoria's been labelled as the highest taxed state in the country, we're
00:58now seeing another increased tax on the households that does nothing for fire protection, will
01:04do nothing to make people in their house safer, but will be diverted into other areas.