CFA crisis: Email reveals Premier’s secret CFA side deal
EXCLUSIVE: AN EMAIL has exposed desperate backroom dealing between Dan Andrews’s top bureaucrat and Australia’s chief industrial judge, in the latest revelation in the CFA crisis.
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AN EMAIL has exposed desperate backroom dealing between Dan Andrews’s top bureaucrat and Australia’s chief industrial judge to better protect Country Fire Authority volunteers, the very day the Premier was publicly claiming the 60,000-strong army had nothing to worry about.
The emergence of Fair Work Commission president Iain Ross’s role in secret talks on the controversial union takeover of the CFA undermines the integrity of the process, after the Premier championed Mr Ross’s colleague, Commissioner Julius Roe, as an “independent umpire’’.
As significant union veto issues were thrashed out in the secret meeting, the Premier was telling state parliament on the same day that “nothing in any agreement should or will adversely impact volunteers’’.
The negotiations, also involving now departed CFA chief Lucinda Nolan, came just 24 hours before the board was sacked and emergency services minister Jane Garrett, who opposed the takeover, was forced to quit.
Following the meeting Ms Nolan sent the email to CFA board members.
In a federal election bombshell that risks costing Labor more votes on Saturday, the Herald Sun can reveal Mr Ross’s secret talks and unusual intervention. The revelations will further anger CFA volunteers, who are mobilising a 10,000-strong army to protest at polling stations in marginal seats.
The email reveals Mr Ross acknowledged the proposed EBA gave the United Firefighters Union vetos on CFA operations, not in a previous enterprise bargaining agreement.
Ms Nolan was summoned to a private meeting on June 9 by Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles. Mr Ross, who phoned in to the meeting, proposed the CFA sign “a joint statement of intent” with the UFU to allay volunteer firefighters’ fears of being sidelined.
This was set out in a three-page memo entitled “Recommendations tabled by Ian (sic) Ross at a meeting chaired by Chris Eccles 2016-6-9”.
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Mr Ross’s intervention undermines government claims that the “fair and balanced’’ recommendations of the commission president’s colleague, Mr Roe, in supporting the UFU takeover, were critical in an independent process.
As anger over the deal exploded this month, Mr Andrews said from New York: “The independent umpire has found and come down with a series of balanced and fair points.’’
He further told parliament on June 9, the day of the secret meeting: “As Commissioner Roe, the independent umpire in this instance, has made very clear, nothing in any agreement should or will adversely impact volunteers.’’
But Mr Ross, not Mr Roe, was in the talks that day.
Commission spokeswoman Camilla Moses said: “As the president had an involvement in seeking to facilitate a resolution of the CFA/UFU dispute he will not be dealing with any subsequent application in relation to this matter — including any application to approve any agreement reached. No further comment is made in relation to the matters raised.”
The Herald Sun can reveal the memo proposed a way to deal with the impact of new “provisions in the Agreement which require consultation and agreement” of the UFU, including the employment of a dispute resolution officer.
Mr Ross suggested that “if there is evidence of a pattern of agreement being withheld” the matter could also be referred to the commission.
The CFA board later gave the memo to a leading industrial relations lawyer, Frank Parry, who said despite Mr Ross’s attempt to water down vetos “there would not be any practicable or timely mechanism for the resolution of disputes where the agreement of the UFU was required’’.
Unusually, despite the proposed CFA deal still not having gone back to the commission for ratification, Mr Ross outlined how it would deal with parts of the agreement.
“During the approval process the FWC will seek an undertaking that the Agreement does not exclude NES (National Employment Standards),” it said.
Also unusually, despite another case before Mr Ross regarding part-time work for firefighters remaining undecided, he said the proposed agreement would pass the Fair Work Act’s “better off overall test” because the previous award did not permit part-time work.
The memo, which outlines a series of suggestions on how to facilitate the passage of the agreement through the commission, was later emailed by Ms Nolan to the CFA board.
“We had the meeting with (the secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet) Chris Eccles and President Ross this morning — with the view that Ross will assist us through a small number of issues,” she said in the email.
Mr Ross did not attend the meeting but phoned in.
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