Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Amendment (Respect for Emergency Services Volunteers) Bill is dangerous legislation. If you are committed to public safety, as I would hope all senators are, you would vote against this legislation. When you look into it—when you look into the way the minister has handled it, what happened during the election campaign with regard to the submissions and the evidence that was given—you see that this is a major stitch-up. It really continues the ongoing way that this government works. It works to undermine workers' rights; it works to undermine how unions operate. It will go to extraordinary lengths. In this case, we are talking about the undermining of public safety.

This bill is political opportunism. It should have been buried. It should never have come to life. It should now be buried. I say that it should never have come to life after the federal election because it was part of a whole ploy. Sometimes bad tactics come out in election campaigns, and this was certainly one of them. The government argues that this bill is needed to protect the rights of Country Fire Authority volunteers, but that does not stand up to scrutiny. When you look at what the minister has said and when you look into what is stated about what this bill will do, that certainly is not the core of this bill.

Volunteer firefighters do an incredible job in Victoria and across the country. The enterprise bargaining agreement the Turnbull government is trying to destroy with this bill will not undermine the massive contribution volunteer firefighters make. I was able to sit on this inquiry, hear the evidence and read many of the submissions. The evidence is overwhelming in that it does not back up what the government asserts. We heard evidence from volunteer firefighters working at integrated stations where volunteers are working side by side with paid firefighters who do not support the bill. Mr Luke Symeoy from Craigieburn told the committee:

On behalf of my brigade: we do not want this bill to go ahead. We want this settled. I would like this settled. The fire season is coming up and we do not need this. This has gone on for too long. The EBA has got nothing to do with volunteers. If anything, it is going to better us and better our skills and better our equipment, because half the equipment that we have got today we would not have if it were not for staff. That is the honest truth. I can stand here and put my hand on my heart and tell you that.

Mr Raj Faour, a volunteer for Hallam, told the committee:

You probably hear a lot in the media, and the VFBV love to speak about 60,000 volunteers and how they represent the 60,000 volunteers. Well, I am one—and one of many—who stands before you today and tells you that we are not represented by the VFBV.

That is why I urge senators committed to public safety to ensure that when the next firefighting season hits Victoria the uncertainty and the undermining at the core of this bill is not allowed to settle into how things will operate in Victoria. I believe that these are informative comments that deserve our consideration when we are looking at this bill.

In going back to the issue of public safety—and this is a key matter that Minister Michaelia Cash sidesteps when she talks about this issue—we need to look at what is happening in Melbourne. Outer Melbourne should receive the same level of protection for firefighting that all people of Melbourne receive. Having sat on the inquiry last week, what became abundantly clear is that we are talking about areas of Melbourne that were once country but are now part of the outskirts of Melbourne. These are areas that deserves full fire protection.

Clearly, Melbourne is a growing city. Where those outskirts areas were once farming land, now when you visit those areas you often see large housing divisions. These areas have been well serviced by the CFA. The CFA was able to do a very effective job when there were rural workers and farmers. The farmers and rural workers were the locals who volunteered and did a mighty job as firefighters. But, as I have said, these outskirts are changing. Now we see that in so many of these areas the workforce is quite different.

I want to quote from a very significant comment from the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. They said: 'We've got a problem here in Victoria with these boundaries. What is called country in some areas is still legitimately country, but in some areas it is now suburban Melbourne, so what are we going to do about it?' It is a very important question; it is a question that this government is refusing to answer. It could be to the severe detriment of public safety and saving lives.

Again, this is a reference to those areas where locals are now more likely to be working not locally but at a distance, in offices and factories. If you are not working locally, you are not readily available to volunteer. The people who live in these areas pay their rates and taxes like other city residents and understandably expect, and have a right to expect, that firefighters who cover the rest of the city will turn up to their part of the city and fight fires. That is what we should be dealing with here. How do we ensure that their transition is as smooth as possible? It is happening, but if this bill goes through it is going to really blow it apart. What will be the impact on public safety if this bill is passed and people in outer Melbourne growth areas are not covered by paid firefighters?

If you listened to Minister Cash, you would think that the enterprise bargaining agreement is an attack on volunteer firefighters due to a union takeover of their activities. Listening to witnesses at the inquiry, it became clear that the concerns of volunteers who thought the EBA would unfairly impact on them arose from misinformation. Where correct information was available, volunteers understood that the proposed EBA does not affect volunteers. Mr Justin Rees, first lieutenant and volunteer firefighter with the Melton brigade, said:

… we have formally expressed this to Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria. However, the volunteer bill 2016, if implemented, will affect our relationship with our members, staff and volunteers and impact our service delivery. Encouraging volunteer organisations to intervene into the employment matters and conditions of people employed by emergency services is not appropriate. We need to be focused on supporting our community, protecting life and property and supporting our emergency service people—volunteer and career.

That was so clearly said. Professor Andrew Stewart, an expert in industrial relations from the University of Adelaide, told the committee that the bill was a recipe for increased complexity, uncertainty and disputation. Again, a reminder to senators here: this bill takes us down a very irresponsible and dangerous path. We are dealing here with emergency services who need to be able to work in a coordinated, cooperative way, and that is what will be ripped apart if this bill is passed. Professor Stewart set out to the inquiry how the bill will require the Fair Work Commission to move into the highly problematic area of attempting to form judgements about how an organisation such as the CFA should construct a proper balance between paid and volunteer firefighters. Professor Stewart also explained how the bill would require the Fair Work Commission to determine matters that properly reside within the authority of the CFA and the state government of Victoria to resolve. That is why you come to the conclusion that disputation will increase if this bill goes ahead.

One of those issues is the very important matter that I mentioned earlier—the conclusion of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission that more paid firefighters are needed in urban growth areas. That is what a responsible government would be working with the Victorian government to resolve. The need that has been identified by the royal commission is clear. A vote for this bill is a vote against that important recommendation. It really is a life-saving recommendation. We need to be very clear. This issue of public safety has been swept aside by the government, and we need to get this back into focus.

We are on the edge of summer. Bushfires, wildfires, are sweeping the world. We know that this is regularly what happens in Australia. We have seen the tragedies in many states, and Victoria has often been the worst affected. It is deeply alarming that the government is willing to sacrifice public safety and not deal with the key issue here. What becomes relevant in considering this issue is the hidden grenades in this bill, which I urge all members of parliament to acquaint themselves with. The bill is not clear as to which emergency service organisations will be covered by the legislation. The bill creates an undisclosed list of employers that are designated emergency management bodies. That is the term that is used. This is a serious development and shows an attempt to undermine a good-faith approach to negotiations for enterprise agreements. The bill, if passed, will undermine the principle of collective bargaining and, in effect, the authority and the ability of the Fair Work Commission to do its job.

Then there is the issue of the definition of a 'volunteer' in the bill. The definition is so broad it includes individuals who receive payment for volunteering. There is also the wide-ranging definition of 'volunteer bodies', which opens up the possibility of a party not covered by the enterprise agreement being able to intervene. This could mean denying workers wage rises and undermining of other parts of the agreement. It is why, as Professor Stewart identified, this bill, if passed, would most likely result in much greater disputation. Ambulance Employees Australia has given compelling evidence of why this legislation should be abandoned.

Minister Cash's management of the issue is also relevant to the debate. Her commentary, in some ways, has been of assistance in exposing what is really going on here. Minister Cash's opinion piece in the Herald Sun on 22 August shared two blatant areas of misinformation. One was that seven paid firefighters—union members—had to be present before the CFA personnel were able to be deployed to a fire. The other one was that paid firefighters had to report only to other paid firefighters, not CFA commanders. She wrote this piece; it was published in the Herald Sun. Clearly, she is out there arguing her case. But when you look into what she asserts, it just does not stack up.

If it were the case that volunteers deployed to a fire had to sit there and wait until paid staff turned up, I acknowledge it would be a concern. But, again, that is not what the agreement says. So why did the minister state that? Did she misunderstand the bill? Why was she arguing the opposite of what the case is? What the agreement says is that in these areas where you have volunteers and professionals overlapping, seven firefighters have to be deployed, but they do not have to turn up before the volunteers can start fighting the fire. If the volunteers turn up first, they start first; they start fighting the fire first. That is not what the minister said when she wrote her article. As I said, that is what the agreement says. It is to ensure that the minimum number of firefighters who can fight a fire safely are on their way and are going to turn up at some point.

It is worth asking: why seven? It is understood to be the minimum for safe standards. Again, we are coming back all the time to the issue of public safety. The intent of the bill, the minister's comments and the minister's misrepresentation of the EBA undermine public safety. I urge all senators give that consideration. When they are thinking about how they are going to vote, public safety needs to be at the front of their mind.

As I said, the minister had another argument about the bill in which she asserted that under the EBA paid firefighters could only report to other paid firefighters, not CFA commanders, implying that the paid firefighters could not report to volunteers. Again, I ask the minister: why did you say that? It is untrue. Clause 77.5 is clear: the first arriving incident controller on a scene can determine the number of appliances and crews. And elsewhere the agreement refers to the incident controller, who could be a volunteer. Again, there is no undermining of the role of volunteers. It is a very cooperative way of working together. The EBA is something that we can learn from and be impressed by. In the complexity—which obviously there is when it comes to fighting fires—it is working through how our volunteer and our paid staff work together. But what do we get from the minister? We get this constant abuse of paid firefighters.

The minister has said that the CFA must get the approval of the union 'for any policy that affects the application or operation of this agreement, or the work of employees covered by it'. What the minister has not acknowledged—and what should have been her starting point—is that the agreement states on page 11:

For the avoidance of doubt, except as provided in Clause 60- Peer Support, nothing in this agreement shall prevent volunteers in the CFA from providing the services normally provided by such volunteers without remuneration.

The role of volunteers is explicitly protected right up the front of the agreement. Again, this needs to be centre in our minds when we are considering how we vote on this bill. The lies that are being pushed by the minister and by those trying to get this bill passed are extreme, and the seriousness of it needs to be put side by side with the question of public safety.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation has also called for this bill to be rejected. In their submission, they identify the significant overreach of this bill, exposing the political opportunism that is at the heart of the government's decision to introduce this bill. The Australian Nursing Federation sets out that where the Commonwealth moves to involve itself in the activities of state agencies established for public purposes it needs 'considered policy analysis', and no such analysis has been given by the government to justify this bill.

As I have given such strong emphasis in my comments to the issue of public safety, I did want to return to the issue of bushfires. It was in 2009 that the Black Saturday fires ravaged Victoria; 173 people died in those tragic events. The Black Saturday fires were subsequently investigated, as we know, by the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, which found serious and systemic issues within the fire agencies that prevented effective and efficient coordination and unambiguous management of the fires, including saying that on 7 February there was no single person in charge of operational planning, tasking and accountability.

The royal commission then recommended greater interoperability as an absolute priority. The EBA—what will be effectively undermined and largely destroyed if this bill goes through—goes a huge way to achieving what the royal commission set out as essential to being able to effectively fight bushfires and put public safety first.

So, again, these issues are critical in how we vote when we come to consider this bill. What we are seeing here is a government that is prepared to put its obsession with undermining working conditions and attacking unions before public safety. They are committed to working hard to divide volunteers from paid firefighting staff. There are so many examples of where cooperation is real, effective and vital to be able to fight fires effectively.

Effectively, the government have been running a major scare campaign—a scare campaign, misleading volunteers by telling them things that are simply untrue; a scare campaign attempting to mislead senators who will shortly vote on this bill on things that are untrue. We have heard about the union-busting law firm that was brought in, which again shows what the intent here has been. As part of a wider agenda I acknowledge that is something that needs to be explored. But right now what needs to be centre of our minds when we come to vote on this bill is: do we put public safety first or do we put the very narrow self-interested agenda of the government and of Minister Michaelia Cash first?

Surely, we should be putting public safety first? The CBA, at the heart of it, is about improving the operations of the firefighting services in Victoria, both volunteer and paid, in a way that is actually commendable and should not be undermined. If you vote for this bill, you undermine the EBA, and you undermine and put public safety at risk. They have listened to the community concern about this agreement and they are acting swiftly to address it in this bill. Victorians, CFA volunteers and anyone who lives in an area protected by them will be grateful for their efforts in this area.

I am very proud to be the first coalition speaker on this bill. I am proud as a Victorian senator because nothing could be more fundamental to my duty to protect the interests of Victorians than standing up for an organisation and for people, in this case CFA volunteers, who do so much to protect us. I am proud to speak as a Liberal because I think this issue very powerfully highlights the deep philosophical difference between this side of the chamber and the other when it comes to the question of civil society and how we best protect ourselves from the ills that we have in our society and the dangers that we face. Should communities self-organise, volunteer and contribute their own time to the best interests of their community or should work always be directed, paid for and controlled by government? We on this of the chamber believe it is a wonderful thing that communities and individuals are willing to give up their time and their effort to protect their community. We do not think it is a bad thing at all, but it seems that the world view of those opposite is that if this job could be done by someone who could be paid, if this job could be done by someone who could be employed by the government, it would be preferable to have that rather than have someone who is a volunteer take up that role.

It was an honour to participate in the parliamentary inquiry into this bill with my colleague Senator Hume, and it was particularly ably chaired by my colleague Senator Bridget McKenzie, who did a wonderful job in this inquiry. It really brought to the fore the key issues that we are facing in this debate with this EBA, with this bill and with the CFA. I grew up in Upper Ferntree Gully in the outer eastern suburbs of Victoria. It is a beautiful part of the world in the Dandenongs, but it is a fire-prone part of the world, and everybody who lives in Upper Ferntree Gully knows, after the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, how important the CFA is to protecting their homes, their livelihoods, their businesses and their lives. Tragically on that day many lives were lost, many homes were lost and many lives were ruined, but our CFA volunteers in those brigades did a particularly wonderful job in protecting them, fighting them and doing their best to come up against the awesome force of those fires on that day.

That is not all that they did. I remember, as a young boy living in Grandview Crescent in Upper Ferntree Gully, that on Christmas Eve the CFA brigades would come with the fire truck. They were dressed up as Santa Claus and they would come and visit the children in our street and other streets in Upper Ferntree Gully, and that is a very nice demonstration of how they see their role as going far beyond just protecting us from fire. They are deeply involved in their community and providing for their community, and I have a very positive impression of the work that they did from that experience. Of course, this is not unique to that part of Victoria or even just to Victoria. This is an issue which we all face and which was most powerfully demonstrated in recent times on Black Saturday in February 2009. No Victorian or Australian could be unaware of the heroic efforts by the CFA—including, I should add, both paid and volunteer staff on those days.

The question I want to ask today is: how is it that we got here? How did we get to such an acrimonious ending to an EBA? All public sector EBAs have the capacity to be fraught and to be controversial. They have competing interests between taxpayers on the one hand and paid employees on the other and between the government's interests in achieving policy objectives and others. All of them have capacity to be fraught, but none have been quite so fraught as this EBA—as this negotiation. It has been an extraordinarily divisive debate and it has left an absolute trail of destruction—a trail of destruction through the CFA and a trail of destruction through the Andrews Labor government. How many other EBAs have cost the job of the CEO of the organisation? It cost the jobs of the Chief Fire Officer of the CFA, the entire board of the CFA and a Labor minister who, in my view, was doing an admirable job in trying to defend the interests of an organisation and of the volunteers who she was responsible for. Let me place on the record my admiration for Jane Garrett and her courage. It is not an easy thing for any of us in public life to take a stand on an issue like this, to be willing to resign and lose a glittering ministerial career over a point of principle, but I have to say it is particularly difficult in the modern Labor Party. Jane Garrett has been subject to ferocious bullying and intimidation because of the stand that she took. We have heard evidence in the media and through the Senate inquiry of times at which she was warned there would be an axe put through her head if she did not reverse course and support this EBA and support the United Firefighters Union. The threats and intimidation have not ended there. They have of course affected the lives of our volunteers and have probably contributed to damaging the relationships between our volunteers and paid firefighters, and that is incredibly concerning for Victorians as we head into summer and as we head into the fire season.

The UFU tells us that this dispute is a furphy—that there is no interest in the federal government in intervening in this dispute, that there is nothing for Victorians to be concerned about—because, they assure us, this EBA deals only with the pay and conditions of the paid employees of the CFA. It affects volunteers in no way according to the UFU. If that was the case, I cannot understand why so many volunteers and Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria would take such a strong interest and have such great concerns about this EBA. It does not matter to them how much their colleagues who are paid receive, it does not matter to them the conditions under which they are employed, unless of course it directly affects their interests—as it so clearly does in this case. I am going to go through some of the clauses that have been drawn to our attention that demonstrate that it does, but there is a more fundamental point than this. At its heart, the CFA is a volunteer organisation. It has 60,000 volunteers. It also has paid firefighters and they do a good job and they are entitled to have good working conditions and to be well paid for it, but they only number in the several hundred. There are 60,000 volunteers. At its heart, the CFA is a volunteer organisation, which means that any EBA which impacts on the CFA's ability to manage itself, to manage its own operations, inextricably is linked to the interests of volunteers and directly affects their interests.

It is not possible for an EBA so restrictive of the decision-making processes of management and so deferential to the UFU to not affect volunteers. That is of course assuming that it is as the UFU says it is—that it only relates to the pay and conditions of paid staff. But I am going to highlight some of the clauses in the UFU agreement that really contradict this. I will not read them all. There are 46. They were very ably put together by the VFBV. I acknowledge the presence in the gallery today of the VFBV team, so capably led by Andrew Ford. I say to him: thank you for everything you have done for your community in this debate.

I will just give a couple of examples. Clause 16.1 is, contrary to what was said by the UFU, directly about the interests of volunteers. It relates to the volunteer support program and volunteer support officers. I will quote directly from the EBA. It states that:

… the CFA will consult and reach agreement with the UFU … on the structure of any Volunteer Support Programs …

That does not sound like something which relates to the pay and conditions of a paid employee or a UFU member.

There are others. I will go on. It refers to peer support programs. In one clause it says:

Peer support employees under this agreement will be drawn from professional firefighters …

That obviously excludes volunteers. On uniforms, appliances and equipment, clause 90.4 says:

The CFA and UFU must agree on all aspects of the:

90.4.1. articles of clothing;

90.4.2. equipment, including personal protective equipment;

90.4.3. technology;

90.4.4. station wear; and

90.4.5. appliances;

Of course these apply not just to paid employees of the CFA but also to volunteers.

This agreement directly affects the interests of volunteers and anyone involved in the CFA. The way in which we can identify why this agreement is so different and so far-reaching is that this is the first EBA of the CFA which has been so contentious. We heard evidence in the inquiry from former board members of the CFA who were involved in previous EBA negotiations. They said there were issues and that they had concerns but ultimately they felt that they were able to agree to those EBAs because they did not detrimentally affect the interests of the CFA or its volunteer firefighters. This one does. This one has had a totally different response because it is a totally different agreement.

Why is it that this agreement has been so fractious and contentious? In part it is because the UFU and the Victorian government have been so unwilling to make any concessions or to listen to any of the concerns of volunteers and others about this agreement. We heard evidence from the new CEO during the inquiry, Ms Frances Diver, who told us about her process in coming to the decision that the CFA should recommend that the EBA be agreed to. She said that over a six- to eight-week period, after she was appointed CEO, she engaged in further discussions with the UFU and a sum total of two concessions were a result of those negotiations. In my view, they do not amount to material changes to the EBA. Ms Diver disagreed and said that they were. But in an agreement with hundreds and hundreds of clauses, many of which were extremely restrictive, to give only two concessions is very minor, particularly over such a short period of time.

The main thing that Ms Diver said allows her to have confidence that the CFA should agree to this agreement is that the UFU had clarified a number of matters about the EBA, clarified some of the misinformation in the debate and given the CFA many assurances about the agreement. I do not take much comfort from those assurances, and I know volunteers do not take much comfort from those assurances. The truth is that we know why the EBA was finally signed. It was signed because the entire board of the CFA was sacked. A new board was appointed with the express instruction that they should resolve this agreement by signing it without much further delay, and a new CEO was appointed to do that.

I just want to make some observations about the actual bill before us today, because I think that is relevant. I was very heartened to hear Senator Cameron outline his concerns about the red tape limitations of this bill and the federalism implications of this bill and the small government implications of this bill. There is hope for Senator Cameron yet if late in his career he is showing such an interest in such high principles. But unfortunately in this instance he is not right and his concerns are erroneous.

The only thing that this bill does to address the direct problem that we have seen in this EBA is to add the definition of 'objectionable terms' in section 12 of the Fair Work Act. It will prohibit objectionable emergency management terms. They are terms which would prevent emergency services bodies from being able to properly manage the volunteer operations and which are contrary to the relevant state legislation covering these bodies. The Fair Work Commission will no longer be able to approve agreements that contain these terms and any such terms in existing agreements will be legally ineffective. This will mean that an enterprise agreement can no longer undermine the capacity of emergency services volunteer bodies to properly manage their operations. Contrary to the concerns raised by some in the hearing and in the chamber today, this will only apply to firefighting and state emergency services organisations in Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory, because they are covered by the national workplace relations system.

The bill will also give volunteer organisations the right to make submissions to the Fair Work Commission about enterprise agreements covering certain emergency services bodies that would affect the volunteers they represent. I think that is a very welcome amendment, given that we know that the interests of volunteers have been so overlooked in this debate and in this EBA negotiation.

I want to conclude my remarks by recommending to the Senate that it pass this bill with the utmost urgency so that our volunteers and paid firefighters in the CFA can begin to prepare and focus on their priority, which is protecting our community ahead of the summer and the fire season, which is coming up.