Victorian Fisheries Media Centre, The Buloke Times
The anticipated merger of the Victorian Fisheries Authority with the Game Management Authority this week – reported online by “The Weekly Times” – might salvage some enforcement clout from the recent sacking of almost half the state’s Fisheries Officers, but it will not make up for a separate decision to bar all remaining officers from responding to emergencies.
On May 20, 2025, the fisheries authority (VFA) finalised an organisational restructure, under which it has since shed 30 (44 per cent) of the state’s 69 Fisheries Officers; leaving just 39 officers to patrol Victoria’s 2,512-kilometre coastline, 10,000 square-kilometres of ocean waters and 170,000 kilometres of inland water frontage along 85,000 kilometres of rivers and creeks.
Then in a separate decision, on Friday, June 13, 2025, the VFA stripped the remaining officers of their duties to “respond to any emergency” by deleting these duties from their Position Descriptions.
This decision was communicated by email from the authority’s human resources manager to an organiser at the state branch of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU Vic) at 5:13 p.m..
Controversy
It also came amid statewide controversy over the Allan Government’s new Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund (ESVF) and whether it will actually deliver value for rural ratepayers, or subsidise Fire Rescue Victoria service provision to urban areas and metropolitan Melbourne.
When interviewed on ABC Statewide Drive in Ballarat on June 25, 2025, the new Emergency Management Commissioner, Tim Wiebusch, was asked whether Fisheries Officers fell within his “remit” – and under his management – in an emergency.
Co-ordination
“The role that I’m in now has a role in providing co-ordination across all our government departments and agencies and that does include the likes of the Victorian Fisheries Authority… because they provide support to a range of emergencies,” Commissioner Wiebusch said.
“They have a high level of on-water capability.”
Under Section 8(kc) of the Victorian Fisheries Authority Act 2016, it is a statutory function of Fisheries Officers “to respond to any emergency…”
The June 13 decision of the fisheries authority will have the effect of permanently preventing Fisheries Officers from providing that function in future, regardless of the Emergency Management Commissioner’s expectations when the next emergency happens.
The fisheries authority on May 20 confirmed, in response to a Freedom of Information request, that it implemented its 2025 workplace changes – which involve both the shedding of frontline personnel and reductions in the duties of remaining staff – without a risk assessment.
Mr Wiebusch told the ABC that SES, Catchment Management authorities, Lifesaving Victoria and Victoria Police also operated boats and could be called upon, if the Victorian Fisheries Authority could no longer be called out.
No contact
None of these organisations or agencies have been contacted to confirm their equivalence to the “high level of on-water capability” of professional Fisheries Officers, nor has the Allan Government announced supplementary funding for this purpose.
However, the Premier’s Office did reportedly tell Ballarat newspaper “The Courier” that the Victorian Fisheries Authority is “not an emergency service.”
Neither the Catchment Management authorities, Lifesaving Victoria, Victoria Police, nor the Victorian Fisheries Authority are funded for their emergency work from the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, and neither do they fall under the jurisdiction of the Inspector-General for Emergency Management.
An entire page of the Emergency Management Victoria (EMV) website is filled by the Role statement – Victorian Fisheries Authority. It specifically details the critical roles of Fisheries Officers in responding to multiple categories of general and specialist emergencies.
Serious gap
Permanently stripping Fisheries Officers of their duties to “to respond to any emergency” will leave a serious capability gap in the State Emergency Management Plan (SEMP) and significantly undermine Victoria’s counter-disaster resilience.
Former Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Kel Glare, his Community Advocacy Alliance and more than 12,900 concerned Victorians have so far hit back with an online petition for an inquiry into the fisheries authority, because the restructure had gone ahead without a risk assessment.
Skills and experience
In the past five years alone, the skills and experience of Fisheries Officers were not only of critical and strategic importance, but indispensable in the safe and expeditious execution of co-ordinated emergency responses to at least two major disasters in this state: the 2020 East Gippsland bushfires and the 2022 Goulburn Valley floods.
In October 2022, Greater Shepparton was impacted by significant and widespread flooding due to intense rainfalls in the catchment areas of the Goulburn and Broken rivers.
Veteran retired Supervising Fisheries Officer and sometimes Regional Manager (North East), Greg Sharp, was the Operations Lead for the Victorian Fisheries Authority, in the Incident Control Centre, during the 2022 Goulburn Valley floods.
He said the rainfall caused the rivers to rise rapidly, leading to extensive flooding in urban and rural areas.
“Fisheries Officers, having specialist skills and experience in the operation of suitable vessels for the circumstances, were mustered from all over Victoria,” Mr Sharp said.
Support
“Our boat crews provided round-the-clock support to Ambulance Victoria and GV Health, and relief agencies – Salvation Army, Society of St Vincent de Paul – delivering food and emergency medicine to householders stranded by flood waters in and around Shepparton and Tatura.
“Fisheries Officers also assisted with wildlife management in the weeks after the floods receded, assisting professional shooters to euthanise stranded wildlife otherwise facing a slow lingering death from starvation. This was no fly-by-night operation, it went on for weeks!”
Mr Sharp said Fisheries Officers also provided indispensable water-borne transport services during and after the January 2020 Mallacoota bushfires which destroyed 123 houses – including five owned by CFA volunteers – and 65 sheds.
“In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 fires, the only road into Mallacoota was utterly impassable; littered with debris and lined with scorched trees ready to shed limbs at the slightest breeze,” Mr Sharp said.
“It was therefore necessary for Fisheries Officers – in Kevlacat patrol vessels – to ferry supplies, personnel and essential equipment into the town by sea from Lakes Entrance. There was so much smoke in the air, flying in was not an option. Aircraft were grounded!”
He said personnel ferried in and out by Fisheries Officers included Country Fire Authority relief crews, needed to complete the mopping-up after the initial major firefight and to respond if smouldering tree roots or other hidden detritus flared-up again.
And when the Fisheries Officers were not boating into Mallacoota, they were just as busy landing supplies and Forest Fire Management Victoria firefighters on to beaches in the remote Croajingolong National Park via Mallacoota Inlet.
“Not even the navy could get in. Our vessels provided the necessary shuttle service between offshore vessels and onshore landing points; whether they be the wharf, a jetty or one of the beaches,” Mr Sharp said.
“Of course, our people did not just turn up after the event. They went in while the fire was still raging, to engage in a daring race against time, to capture and evacuate by sea many critically endangered eastern bristlebirds nesting in the paths of approaching fire fronts.”
Mr Sharp said that while these fires and floods had happened within the past five years, they also typified a long history of major-disaster emergency responses by a great many Fisheries Officers who, since the 1950s, were subsequently decorated for their extraordinary service.
“Yes, I was awarded an NEM (National Emergency Medal) for my participation as a Fisheries Officer in responding to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires,” Mr Sharp said.
This article appeared in The Buloke Times, 4 July 2025.