James Campbell: Premier Daniel Andrews’ adviser spoke with experience

WHEN the Premier’s adviser said the UFU’s boss had “crossed the line ... as to what would be acceptable behaviour” he was speaking with years of experience, writes James Campbell.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Picture: Sarah Matray

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MORE than a year ago, Daniel Andrews’ industrial relations adviser was so worried about the way UFU boss Peter Marshall was behaving towards ministers, MPs and bureaucrats, he took the extraordinary step of committing his concerns to paper.

John-Paul Blandthorn is not some neophyte political staffer with no experience of the rough and tumble of the industrial relations world. He was a union official in the Australian Workers’ Union and was at one time in the running to replace Cesar Melhem as that union’s state secretary.

When Blandthorn said Marshall has “crossed the line in recent months as to what would be acceptable behaviour” he was speaking with years of experience of what is acceptable.

But instead of standing up to union demands that his own staff were telling him were “unrealistic … in both pay and entitlements”, the Premier of Victoria has chosen to give in to them — even though the union was “insistent on keeping outdated practices which are detrimental to the operation”.

A year later, former emergency services minister Jane Garrett is sitting on the backbench.

The board of the CFA has been sacked and its chief executive and chief fire officer have both resigned.

United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

All because they agreed with Daniel Andrews’ own industrial relations adviser, that this deal is a dud.

On the day Garrett resigned, Andrews refused to answer when asked if he thought Marshall had bullied his emergency services minister. Now we know why — his own staff had asked Marshall to be more respectful to his ministers.

Yet when asked by the Opposition in parliament this month if any of his staff had ever complained about Marshall, the Premier had an attack of amnesia, saying that he couldn’t recall anyone doing so.

One of the most telling aspects of the Blandthorn memo is the reference to how the Premier was clearly trying to keep the UFU on side: “MARSHALL be told that that it is our intention that there is ongoing relationship of mutual trust. The Government is sometimes in a difficult position being the employer where we will have to say ‘no’ but this should not define us.”

Even though at one point last year Marshall sent the entire caucus a “manifesto” outlining his anger at Garrett’s refusal to do what he wanted in the discipline case of a senior MFB officer charged with distributing porn on his work computer.

For months, as the number of voices against this deal rose with each passing week, the question Labor MPs have been asking themselves is: why? Why are we being put through all this political pain? As one senior minister likes to put it “whatever the alternative to this is, it must be pretty bad because this is awful”. The question remains the same and the answer as elusive as ever.

The danger for Andrews is that a growing number of his MPs appear to be losing interest in the answer. They just want it to stop.