The inside story of the fire services saga that sparked a bombshell anti-corruption probe

Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog has launched a bombshell probe into the relationship between the Andrews Government and the United Firefighters Union. How did it come to this?

WHEN Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville announced the Andrews Government’s latest legislation to carve up Victoria’s fire services, she do so with a sense of finality.

“We want to get this done, we want to move on from this,” Neville said in May.

It was eerily reminiscent of her leader’s remarks almost three years ago to the day.

In June 2016, Premier Daniel Andrews declared his intervention was necessary during a raging dispute over a new CFA workplace agreement — which sparked the eventual fire services restructure.

“This dispute had to come to an end and I ended it,” Andrews proclaimed.

Two months earlier, in April of that year, Andrews had personally met United Firefighters Union boss Peter Marshall.

.@DanielAndrewsMP says he's proud to say "enough is enough" to decisively end CFA dispute. @theheraldsun #springst pic.twitter.com/RRsPnlXNc1

— Tom Minear (@tminear) June 10, 2016

Following that meeting, it became clear that anyone seeking to prevent the CFA deal being signed, sealed and delivered would be dismissed or destroyed.

In the years since that 2016 meeting, political blood has been splattered across the walls of the CFA, MFB and Spring St.

A stream of board members, seven chief executives, more than half a dozen chief and deputy chief officers and a myriad of bureaucrats and ministerial staff have all departed.

Along the way, Labor’s 2016 federal election campaign was torched, leaving Bill Shorten to wonder what might have been.

Through it all, Marshall survived and thrived.

Those in the fire services used to whisper about Marshall’s “list” of people he wanted gone because they had fought with him or were perceived to be anti-union.

Whether myth or reality, the list of senior people who have exited the CFA and MFB over the past five years is almost as long as a list of UFU ambit claims.

UFU boss Peter Marshall. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Like a man walking between the raindrops, the militant union leader has had a remarkable run.

His campaign to save a member from the sack after porn and racist material was accessed on a computer threatened to derail the government, but the commander was saved.

A year-long Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission investigation into fire services, which exposed serious issues regarding diversity and bullying, was blocked by the courts because of a technicality and the Andrews Government declined to do another one.

A WorkSafe bullying case against Marshall took more than two years to get to the stage where the watchdog was prepared to lay charges, but the Director of Public Prosecutions thought it would be hard to make them stick.

His threats about firefighters taking to former emergency services minister Jane Garrett with an axe — something she said wasn’t literal but was nevertheless distressing — were largely ignored.

And yet, when he had the opportunity last year to back in Daniel Andrews — the man who has given him almost everything he wanted — Marshall almost blew up the entire Labor show.

Former emergency services minister Jane Garrett. Picture: David Caird

Appearing on ABC Melbourne during Raf Epstein’s show in April 2018, he made claims Labor MPs found frightening during questions about his dealings with the premier.

“There was a number of promises and they will come out in near future,” Marshall said.

“You don’t (know) now, but you will”.

Andrews denied there was a secret deal, saying promises made to the UFU were public and said he was not aware of any secret recording of him, held by Marshall.

Concerns about Marshall were raised internally by Andrews’s private office as early as August 2015, when a secret memo questioned his behaviour towards government officials.

The memo was untraceable under Freedom of Information laws, but called for the premier to ask Marshall to “be more respectful to all ministers, members, staff and departments”.

It also noted Marshall wanted to preserve outdated practices in fire services and it “may be too hard to move on this”.

The memo was sent to the premier about eight months before he met personally with Marshall, in April 2016.

Despite everything the government had done for him and his members, Marshall kept demanding more.

Former Metropolitan Fire Brigade chief Dan Stephens. Picture: James Ross (AAP)

During his outburst on Epstein’s show, his anger was directed at the fact UK firefighter Dan Stephens was appointed by the government as the MFB’s new chief officer.
The UFU should have been consulted, he said.

Stephens went on to have a difficult relationship with Marshall, and he was recently overlooked as the head of the new Fire Rescue Victoria agency. He has since resigned.

From the middle of next year, FRV will have been created and will take in all professional firefighters — nearly all of whom are UFU members.
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The world-leading CFA will be a volunteer-only agency, with some full-time staff seconded from the new FRV to help out.

Labor MPs were desperately hoping for a fresh start under FRV, drawing a line through the rolling crisis that has engulfed it for five years.

Revelations the state’s anti-corruption watchdog is secretly probing Victoria’s fire services extinguishes that hope.

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