An influx of CFS volunteers has been blamed for much of the planned increase in this year’s Emergency Services Levy, despite widespread reports of firefighters withholding their services in protest at the State Government’s cash grab.

A parliamentary inquiry into the proposed ESL increase has been told the CFS has been inundated with around 1000 new volunteers in the past two years, putting cost pressures on the service to train and equip the new recruits.

“We won’t turn them away (so) it would cause us to have a serious rethink about how we cut our budget just to meet those demands,” CFS Chief Greg Nettleton told the Economic and Finance Committee.

While the increase has been offset by attrition, there has still been a net increase, and new funding is still required for training, equipping and administration.

“We’ve had some significant fires and that’s encouraged people to join us,” said Nettleton.

“When a new volunteer comes into the CFS there are costs associated with that, particularly training courses and kitting them out … We’ve asked for an increase in the CFS budget to allow us to train new volunteers and we look forward to that funding coming in.”

He said if the service “didn’t get the additional funding we’d have to revisit our budget and look at areas where we’d have to make compromises”.

“The only cost component that’s free is the hourly labour cost; the cost of a load of fuel is the same, the cost of a helmet is the same,” he said.

The CFS chief said despite some service areas refusing to fight fires on government land or threatening to withhold their services, “I’m not aware of any volunteers that have resigned because of the ESL increases”.

He said attrition was more widely the result of work or family pressures, or volunteers relocating.

“That (the ESL) is not one of the topics that’s top of mind for volunteer leaders,” he said.

The committee also heard cost pressures had been imposed from a “review of a review” into a proposed restructure of the state’s emergency services.

A plan to bring them all under one umbrella prompted widespread protests, prompting Emergency Services Minister Tony Piccolo to back away from the change.

But new MFS chief officer Greg Crossman told the inquiry: “We’re currently in the midst of a review of the review, reviewing where we are with regards to the reform.”

A spokesman for Piccolo suggested that terminology was unfortunate, and that the “review” was considered to be “re-setting” of the reform process, which has thus far cost $550,000 to date.

Opposition spokesman Dan Van Holst Pellekaan slammed the process, saying the money could have instead alleviated the ESL increase, covering the cost of training around a third of the new volunteers.

“Of course I welcome more people joining and being well trained, but over half a million dollars has been wasted on the Government’s failed sector reform (and) that money could have gone towards training,” he said.

There appear likely triggers for future ESL increases, with the MFS “looking at our ageing workforce”.

“We’re looking at changing over a significant percentage of our workforce in the next five to ten years and that will see a significant impact on our costs,” Crossman told the inquiry.