CFA pay dispute: Jane Garrett doomed from day one

DANIEL Andrews never wanted former Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett in his Cabinet. And now she’s gone.

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DANIEL Andrews never wanted Jane Garrett in his Cabinet and now she’s gone.

Ms Garrett, a former adviser to premier Steve Bracks, lawyer with Slater and Gordon and mayor of Yarra, was preselected for the seat of Brunswick with hopes that she would one day be a minister.

Jane Garrett was doomed from day one. Picture: AAP Image/Angus Livingston

But when she arrived in Spring St, in the aftermath of the Brumby government’s defeat, the new Opposition leader Andrews gave her nothing except a lowly spot on the law reform committee.

When a caucus election for a Socialist Left position in the shadow cabinet came up in December 2013 and Ms Garrett decided to run, Mr Andrews and his Mr Fixit, Gavin Jennings, kept her out, making sure the spot went to Martin Foley instead.

The only reason Ms Garrett got into the Cabinet when Labor won office a year later was because another SL member, Brian Tee, lost his seat.

And the reason Ms Garrett had been in a powerful enough position to do that was that she had built a powerbase for herself in the Socialist Left by being instrumental in bringing the rich and powerful CFMEU into the faction. (Emma Walters, CFMEU boss John Setka’s wife, is a close friend of Ms Garrett’s.)

This new power bloc in the SL was a threat to the Andrews and Jennings influence in the party, one of the reasons some observers believe for their antipathy towards Garrett.

In Opposition the emergency services portfolio had been in the hands of Wade Noonan who had worked hard at getting the CFA’s volunteer firefighters in Labor’s corner and reassuring them they had nothing to fear from the United Firefighters Union if Daniel Andrews became Premier.

Then weeks before the state election, while he was on leave Mr Noonan was sidelined by the Opposition Leader who began dealing directly with the UFU chief, Peter Marshall. Sound familiar?

In the week before the state election Daniel Andrews addressed a rally of UFU members at the Collingwood Town Hall promising $141 million to recruit an extra 450 firefighters for the CFA if Labor won.

Sources familiar with Mr Noonan’s thinking say he knew what that number would mean for the future of the volunteers in the CFA. And who could say what else might have been promised on the side?

After the election he politely declined to take the portfolio. Ms Garrett drew the short straw. Once in the job, the longstanding EBA dispute became all-consuming.

The turning point in her relationship with Mr Marshall came over the way the UFU went in to bat for a senior MFB officer accused of distributing pornography on his work email. Mr Marshall intervened with the Premier’s office to get the way the matter was dealt with altered. Ms Garrett resisted his interference. Mr Marshall was furious. Their relationship never recovered.

Former Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett. Picture: Sarah Matray

By December last year, Ms Garrett was done talking with the UFU. She gave CFA members a pay rise, declared the negotiations over, offering them a bigger pay rise if they agreed to roll over the existing EBA.

Mr Andrews accepted her position telling nervous caucus members worried about the UFU trucks parked outside their electorate office that the pair were together on how to deal the EBA.

And there the matter rested until April when — while Ms Garrett was on leave — the Premier intervened and met Marshall privately. The Government was now prepared to accept the UFU’s demands in their entirety.

The fig leaf for this cave in, which would infuriate the state’s volunteers would be provided by the Fair Work Commission, which last week duly handed down recommendations endorsing just about everything the union wanted.

It was a deal Ms Garrett could not in good conscience accept. The clergyman’s daughter had made it clear to everyone who asked that she thought the deal was outrageous — even immoral.

She would rather quit than be a party to it. The premier accepted her resignation in a two line statement that did not thank her for her service. Then his lackeys hit the phones to brief against her.

“It’s a mystery to me why Jane would side with the volunteers who lean to the right of politics when she is of the industrial left,” one minister said.

The minister said there was a view that a personal falling out between Ms Garrett and Mr Marshall was the real reason for her resignation.

“We cannot fathom why she has taken this course; there is an element of mystery to it,” the minister said.

Actually minister, there’s no mystery: Ms Garrett quit because being driven round in a big white car was less important than doing something that she thought was wrong.

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