Energy Safe Victoria made the offer to brief member for Wannon and federal Education Minister Dan Tehan on Monday.

Mr Tehan had requested an overhaul of the state energy distribution network power pole maintenance program following the St Patrick's Day fires which devastated parts of the south-west.

On Monday an ESV spokesman said the regulator would be happy to brief the minister and outline forward plans recently released in a Draft Report: The Condition of Power Poles in South West Victoria

Mr Tehan said he was delighted to accept the offer.

"But the community must be included and the briefing should be held in Terang," he said.

"It's imperative that the community has an input and those with power to regulate understand the utter devastation of bushfires caused by failing electricity infrastructure."

ESV is seen as a toothless tiger and was identified as a weak regulator in the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission.

In the decade since then its reputation has not improved and electricity distributor Powercor is seen as self-regulating.

Issues came to a head on the night of March 17 last year when four major bushfires were sparked by electrical infrastructure in the south-west.

They burnt out 26 homes, more than 200 farms, huge numbers of livestock and countless lives were tipped upside down.

Powercor has a network of 571,800 power poles.

Under intense pressure this year it has almost doubled pole replacement to 2200 - less than half of one per cent.

With the majority of the network more than 50 years old - with a life expectancy of 65 years - questions are being asked about the sustainability of the system.

Powercor's current maintenance program is based on check and replacement.

Mr Tehan has called for ESV to enforce forward thinking change to make the distribution system safer on days of catastrophic fire risk.

He said the logical result would otherwise be an overwhelming maintenance issue in the near future as pole standards reached critical levels.

Those calls are being strongly resisted by ESV and Powercor.

Victims of the St Patrick's Day fires are likely to provide clear direction for the regulator at a community briefing.

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The Sisters/Garvoc fire was caused after a rotten pole snapped, just months after being checked and declared safe.

Relentless bushfire campaigner Jill Porter, a dairy farmer from The Sisters who was a victim of the St Patrick's Day fires, said ESV's plans fell well short of community expectations.

Mrs Porter said a recent ESV report lacked transparency, there was no public accountability or any independent expert opinion considered and no targets set for a sustainable pole replacement program.

"It's just another deal between ESV and Powercor, more of the same with Powercor effectively self-regulating," she said.

"It highlights a complete lack of care for community safety almost 16 months after the St Patrick's Day fires.

"With another fire season just around the corner there has been no sense of urgency or timeliness or any real progress since the fires."

Mrs Porter said the distribution system was nearing its use-by date and the regulator was failing to plan for the future.

"When is ESV going to get serious? The lack of infrastructure spending is no joke - it's extremely dangerous and my community knows exactly how dangerous," she said.

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