Farmers say new State Government registration rules will allow their firefighting utes to use public roads while covered by insurance.
The new rules are lenient compared with standard registration. Critical components such as brakes and steering will need to be compliant.
Mike Gilder is a farmer and Rural Fire Service member at Merriwa. He says it’ll allow farmers to assist the RFS.
“Its great, it’ll allow a lot of farmers to bring in their equipment to fires quicker, maybe faster response from some of fire trucks and keeping the fire small, that’s the most important thing,” he said.
“The farmer fire units go to the fires anyway, but [previously] they’ve been going illegally,” he said.
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| Mike Gilder |
Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison says the reforms have been needed since the Black Summer Bushfires.
“I can’t express how much it impacted me in 2019-2020 being on the fire grounds, I was there.
“This really puts the power back in the community’s hands to help each other and we know in trauma informed response[s], if people have power to help their own response they often recover more quickly,” she said.
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| Jenny Aitchison |
