Bushfire inquiry delay labelled a farce as Victoria heads for El Nino summer

The lessons from last summer’s destructive bushfires will come too late to inform Victoria’s preparations for the next fire season after the state’s emergency management watchdog delayed her inquiry into the 2026 disaster.

Inspector-General for Emergency Management Emily Phillips has confirmed that three months after fires killed one person, destroyed 300 homes and burnt 400,000 hectares across the state, she has not begun the review announced by Premier Jacinta Allan at the height of the crisis.

Instead, she has shelved her work until after a separate, parliamentary inquiry into the fires delivers its report. Phillips anticipates her inquiry will not be up and running before “mid-to-late” this year as south-eastern Australia potentially heads into a hot and dry El Nino summer.

The delayed timeline means that even if Phillips reports before the end of this year, her recommendations will be too late to inform any decisions about firefighting equipment, staffing or emergency response practices for next summer.

The Victorian government confirmed it was aware of the timeframe. “As the independent inspector‑general has said, staging the reviews allows her work to consider the parliamentary inquiry’s findings while also ensuring our emergency agencies aren’t stretched across multiple major reviews at once,” a spokesperson said.

Nationals MP Annabelle Cleeland, whose electorate of Euroa was engulfed by the deadly Longwood fire which ignited on the side of the Hume Highway and killed local cattle farmer Max Hobson, said the delay “reeks of bureaucracy”.

“This was a tragedy,” she said. “Significant elements of this disaster could have been avoided and we need that feedback before we make the same mistakes next summer.

“Why did they want it pushed out for nearly 12 months, when you then can’t make any recommended changes before the next summer? What is the premier hiding? Is she willing for the same mistakes to be made again?”

Country Fire Authority Volunteers Group president John Houston said there was no reason why the two inquiries could not run in parallel.

“You may as well not have an inquiry if you are going to wait until next year,” he said. “By the sounds of it, she is waiting for everyone else to write the report, and she will just click and drag.”

Andrew Weidemann, a Wimmera grain farmer whose Across Victoria Alliance has become a lightning rod for regional resentment against the government’s tax policies and what it claims is a poorly resourced CFA, said there was an urgent need to improve firefighting equipment and morale before the next bushfire season.

The group, along with the opposition, the United Firefighters Union and the CFA Volunteers Group, backed the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry into the fires. “This shows why we felt the inspector-general was a toothless tiger,” Weidemann said. “We are seeing another public farce.”

The premier announced the Inspector-General for Emergency Management inquiry into the fires on January 15, a week after the Longwood blaze was ignited by a passing trailer sending a spark into long grass next to the highway during a day of catastrophic fire conditions.

At the time, Allan was frustrated by what she described as a misinformation campaign about CFA funding and problems with the agency’s ageing truck fleet.

In a statement released to announce the inquiry, a government spokesperson emphasised the need for non-partisan review.

“Once the risk is reduced, we will request a formal review into this bushfire season led by the Inspector-General for Emergency Management, not politicians,” they said. “The Inspector-General for Emergency Management was established for exactly this purpose – to provide expert advice so we can continually improve our response.”

The opposition later secured the support of crossbench MPs to establish a separate, upper house inquiry, to be chaired by Labor MP Ryan Batchelor. It has invited submissions but is yet to schedule any public hearings, with its original reporting date pushed back two months to the end of July.

That inquiry will look at issues including preparation and planning by government and emergency services agencies and funding for equipment and appliances to the CFA.

The Inspector-General for Emergency Management was established after the 2009 Black Saturday fires, the deadliest since records were kept, to bolster public accountability of the state’s response to bushfire and other emergency disasters.

When the previous inspector-general, Tony Pearce, conducted an inquiry into the 2019-20 fires, he handed down his findings and 17 recommendations into the state’s fire preparedness and response on July 31, 2020. The second half of his inquiry, into the effectiveness of relief and recovery arrangements, was completed the following year.

The delay in the 2026 inquiry was revealed after independent MP Will Fowles last month wrote to Phillips asking her about the timing and scope of her review. Fowles is the brother of winemaker Matt Fowles whose Avenel vineyards were destroyed by the Longwood fire.

Phillips told Will Fowles that she wanted to consider the findings and recommendations of the parliamentary committee’s review before commencing her own inquiry. “Following completion of the committee’s work in mid-to-late 2026, I intend to publish information on my review, including terms of reference and opportunities for public engagement,” she wrote.

This masthead gave Phillips a series of questions, including whether she could provide an assurance that her inquiry into last summer’s fires would be completed before the next fire season, but her spokesperson did not address the question.

Before her appointment in 2024, Phillips worked for 10 years in senior public service positions in water, agriculture, telecommunications and regulatory services.

A government spokesman said Victoria’s emergency services were conducting their own reviews into last summer’s fires, the findings of which would inform their preparations for the next fire season.

“Last summer’s fires were devastating – our focus is on learning from them and supporting the Victorian communities impacted,” the spokesman said.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s most recent long-term forecast, published late last month, predicts warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures and a possible shift to El Nino by late winter. If this is confirmed, it will likely bring hotter and drier summer conditions to Victoria.

Cleeland said the risk of delaying the Inspector-General for Emergency Management inquiry was that memories would fade and important issues left unaddressed. She said the response to the Longwood fire had been hampered by confusion over which radio channels to use and the suitability of trucks and other equipment available to firefighting crews.

“There is a timeline of memory,” she said. “If you genuinely want to bring in change and protect communities from the same mistakes, the sooner the better.”

Last summer’s fire crisis was the first to which Victorian emergency services have responded since the CFA was shifted into the newly created Fire Services Victoria, a change resisted by some within the traditionally volunteer organisation.

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