Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I suppose I can speak with some authority about this. Believe it or not, I am 41 years of age but I am a 25-year member of the Country Fire Authority. I signed up at 16 and that gives me a unique opportunity to speak in this place on this, because there are not many country Victorian MPs and this is largely a Victorian issue. Also, my electorate is a third of the state and has many, many CFA branches right across it. Having been President of the Victorian Farmers Federation in a previous job and represented farmers, who largely go out and fight the fires, and also in that capacity having worked quite closely with Daniel Andrews, who is now the Premier of Victoria, I cannot believe the blundering mess that Premier Andrews has created here. He has taken strong stances against family violence for which I commend him. He has done some good things in drought-affected communities for which I commend him. But this is one where he has absolutely stuffed it up.

As much as the Labor Party are trying to say that the federal government is trying to play politics on this, the politics have been played out by Daniel Andrews within his own team. The message that has come to the average volunteer is that the government does not value them, and that is a great sadness because, really, that is not the message that the government of either political persuasion would choose to send. Our Country Fire Authority volunteers, as we speak, are active today in the electorate of Mallee with Charlton looking like it will hit flood levels at about two o'clock this afternoon—a town that was flooded three times recently and people are very nervous about it.

Without politicising this, I want to say that both sides of parliament do value our volunteers. These are people who do not brand themselves as heroes. I have stood out at two o'clock and three o'clock in the morning when there has been a fatality from a rollover of a B-double and I have put class-A foam to try to stop that tragedy from resulting in more fatalities. I do not class myself as a hero; I am a country person just doing what country people do. But what they are disappointed in is that the United Firefighters Union's quest to take them over to have a greater say has been endorsed by the Daniel Andrews government.

Essentially, the United Firefighters Union were very active in the last state election of Victoria. They were quite active in handing out how-to-vote cards, quite aggressive in handing out how-to-vote cards. They campaigned in their uniforms, and this is really payday for them. Daniel Andrews has wrongly judged the sentiment of Victorians. In an effort to pay back the unions, he could have given them greater pay, he could have given them better workplace conditions. But what he has chosen to do is cave in to the United Firefighters Union's attempt to take control of the CFA. This is where the government needed to intervene.

Now, this should not be a federal government issue. This should be dealt with in Victoria by a respectful Andrews government. It was such a political issue inside Mr Andrews' own parliament that he had to sack a minister. They then had to sack a board and put in one that is regarded by the membership, whether rightly or wrongly, as comprised of yes-men and yes-women. I predict it may well lead to Daniel Andrews no longer being the Premier in a term of his own government. I think that is a very real possibility. Any talk that this has been politicised by the conservative side of parliament does not recognise that the politicisation is taking place within the Andrews government. The message that they have sent is that volunteers are not valued.

What this bill seeks to do is to give greater recognition to the fact that a union, in negotiating the best outcome for their members—which is what their role is, and we do have a role for unions in Australia to do that—cannot do it to the detriment of volunteers. That is what this bill is all about. It tries to put a weighting back into the obligations of Fair Work Australia to consider the impacts upon those volunteers. It is unprecedented that a union or a government would stand by and allow the control of volunteers when they try and negotiate outcomes for their membership, so I think this bill is a very wise move for the government to take.

I will go back to the very start and say that we should never have had to go down this pathway, because the state Labor government, in particular Daniel Andrews, should have sent a very strong message that the union was not going to override the rights and value and minimise the authority of a volunteer organisation such as the Country Fire Authority. I support this legislation. We must have this legislation. I appeal to the Premier, who I know personally, to have a hard look at the messages he has sent to our volunteers, and to rein in the United Firefighters Union and hold them to account instead of giving them everything they want at the expense of our hardworking and dedicated Country Fire Authority volunteers.

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