NSW fire services spent less than 80 per cent of the amount allocated by Victorian organisations on staffing and capital costs, but had to respond to nearly twice the number of fires and other incidents last year.
NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay said the report shows that the state's fire services are under-resourced."This just proves the Berejiklian government has not resourced the Rural Fire Service and the entire effort to fight bushfires to an adequate standard."The feedback we've got across the board is that they simply have not done enough ... now we've seen the result in its poor handling of the worst fires on record.
The Productivity Commission states that: "Low or declining expenditure per person may reflect improving efficiency. Alternatively, it may reflect lower quality responses or less challenging fires." Of the 150,000 incidents in NSW, 33,655 were fires, 47,200 were false alarms, 17,700 were non-fire rescue calls and 17,755 were calls for hazardous conditions.Loading
The report comes as firefighters continue to face one of the worst bushfire seasons in NSW in at least a decade, with more than five million hectares of land burned and 2400 homes destroyed so far.
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