Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise as chair of the employment and education committee, whose task it has been over recent weeks to conduct the inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Respect for Emergency Services Volunteers) Bill 2016, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to stand here as a very proud regional Victorian and recommend, as the committee did, that this particular bill be passed. I am incredibly disappointed in particular that my Victorian Labor Party Senate colleagues are not similarly supporting this bill. It has been an incredibly arduous issue within our home state, as the world-renowned Country Fire Authority—which runs the majority of the firefighting volunteers, paid employees and brigades right across my great state—purely volunteer brigades and also integrated brigades—have been the subject of an EBA process that has damaged not only the culture within the CFA but also pitted firefighters who should be working together for the safety of our communities against each other.

I have been really interested to listen to the debate this morning, and it disheartens me when I hear Labor Party senator after Labor Party senator, including those who are not even from my home state, claiming and decrying the politicisation of this particular issue. Where were they at the last state election in my home state? Where were they when there were union members in firefighting uniforms handing out how-to-vote cards, handing out how-to-vote information to Victorians heading into the state election? This particular fight is nothing more than Daniel Andrews having to pay the ferryman for his premiership. That is the sad reality, because if it was not more than that, then we would have Labor Party senators backing our volunteers, backing our 60,000 volunteer firefighters in Victoria, and supporting this legislation to simply give them a say when industrial relations affect their organisation and their capacity to keep us safe. That is what this legislation seeks to do, and I recognise members of our volunteer brigades in the gallery today both from my home state of Victoria—the great state of Victoria—and Tasmania and around about. It is great to have you in the gallery today to listen to this particularly important debate.

If you were on the ground in regional Victoria, this was an issue way before it became an election issue. It was not just National Party voters who were also volunteer firefighters who had an issue with how this was proceeding and it was not just Liberal Party voters who were our CFA volunteers who had an issue with how this was proceeding; it was our CFA volunteers who were Greens voters and it was our CFA volunteers who were Labor Party voters—who were Labor Party members—who similarly had an incredible issue with how the UFU and the Labor Party were using the great organisation of the CFA, which has not been involved in politics and simply goes about doing the job of keeping Victorians safe, as a political tool over a long period of time. To come in here and say it was the coalition government who started that conversation I think is incredibly naive and shows that you have not actually been on the ground out in brigades talking to Labor Party voters and coalition voters alike within the CFA who have issues with this matter.

The inquiry that we conducted had over 321 submissions in a very, very short time span, and, unlike other inquiries where you might get 100 get-up submissions, where they are all the same and just the name on the front of it is a bit different, these were individual submissions from brigades in their totality, from CFA members and from individuals out in our local communities emphasising the fact that the CFA and its volunteers needed protection. We held two hearings. One was out at Macedon, and I thought it was fantastic to get senators, particularly out-of-state senators who may not have been across the CFA as it is structured and the work that it does, out into regional Victoria listening directly to volunteers from as far away as Dumbalk, Wangaratta and Lara—you name it; they came en masse. I really want to pay tribute to the volunteers and to the paid firefighters who came to that hearing and gave us a very clear, firsthand assessment of their view of the legislation and how it might work for them

We then had, obviously, a hearing in Melbourne where we heard from the UFU, VFBV et cetera, and that again was very informative. I would like to thank everybody who took the time out, with a very short time frame, to give their perspective on this issue. And it is a serious issue—state ministers do not get sacked for nothing, CFA boards do not get sacked for nothing, CFA CEOs do not resign for nothing and CFA chief operating officers do not resign for nothing. They all walked because they knew that the EBA as it existed would fundamentally undermine the CFA's capacity to fulfil its statutory obligations. It is that simple. If you have any doubts, please read the letter on the committee's website from one of Melbourne Fire Brigade's ex-statutory officers, Peter Brown, who also has had similar issues when dealing with the UFU and the way they obstructed his—he has now resigned—role as a statutory officer. It is because they chose to fill the EBA with the requirement to consult and agree, even after a protracted negotiation. As Senator Carr says, three years is a long time and, if you are not going to move, that three years just stretches out. To this day we have 50 clauses in the EBA that contain the words 'consult' and 'agree'. CFA policy cannot be changed, the CFA cannot decide on a matter of policy within its own organisation, unless not only does it consult with the UFU but also the UFU agrees to whatever the outcome is. If it does not agree, we kick it down the can and it goes into a dispute mechanism in which, at the end of the day, the volunteers have no say—and that is essentially what we are talking about. There are 35,000 members and 60,000 people in total having no say in industrial relation matters that directly impact on their capacity to fill their statutory obligations to fight a fire on the ground.

Our hearings had a whole list of examples of clauses, and they are attached in appendix 3 of the report that was tabled earlier this morning. For anyone who is listening, you can go and look at this. There are specific clauses right throughout the EBA which affect and impact on the CFA and their volunteers' ability to do their job. When I put these to the UFU's boss, Mr Marshall, and said, 'You say that's not the case, you say the volunteers are wrong and that this will not impact them, where is the evidence, Mr Marshall? Please provide us with the legal advice that would support your opinion.' I am yet to see that. We are taking as fact what the head of a union says when he sits there and says, 'No, Senator, the volunteers are wrong—no, that's not the case.' You can read the Hansard. For question after question, he said that that was not the case. When asked to provide evidence, he had nothing. He was given extra time to provide evidence and, to my knowledge, as of today no evidence has been provided.

In contrast, when the CFA and the volunteers were asked to back up why they felt that these particular clauses would undermine the capacity for them to do their jobs, they had got legal advice from a range of sources. They had experts. They gave us absolutely detailed on-the-ground advice on how these clauses would have an impact on their capacity to keep Victorians safe and, I think almost as importantly, to retain the volunteer culture of the CFA, which is a world renowned organisation that we are incredibly proud of. The state legislation that sets up the CFA defines it as a volunteer organisation supported by employees, and that is rare and that takes unique management. It takes a unique approach to industrial relations—well, it should. Through this EBA the union has essentially sought to insert issues that should be around standard operating procedures into an industrial agreement, and I just think that was a really bad way to go and we are seeing the repercussions of that.

In terms of how the report goes to the issue, I will just examine the adverse impact of the EBA on the volunteers and CFA culture. We looked at the emergency management legislation because usually, as I said, EBA negotiations are between employers and employees, but here you have an organisation that not only has some employees; it also has 35,000 volunteers working for them. It is unpaid work, but they are working within that organisation. So how do we deal with an industrial agreement and its subsequent impact in that scenario? The EBA as currently put forward does not assist. It would seem that Victorians en masse support that.

It does not matter whether it is Joe Buffone or Lucinda Nolan; the former CEOs made it very, very clear in the inquiry that the EBA would absolutely override the organisation's capacity to fulfil its statutory obligations. That is serious stuff. You do not just get to change the minister, change the board, shuffle a few deckchairs and ram something like that through and completely undermine the capacity of an organisation like the CFA to do its role. It is absolutely unbelievable.

As I said, we have attached the power of veto to the report. There was evidence about the brigade administrative support officers and how the EBA would impact on them. We had evidence from a CFA volunteer in Macedon that including that particular role in the EBA showed a complete misunderstanding of what the role was all about. The person in that role would probably be having to work at night or on weekends simply because of the way the brigade functions. They are not a nine-to-five operation because volunteers are usually working in small business or in our many public service operations out there in the community. They have regular jobs. They work regular hours. So if you are going to be an administrative officer supporting them, you have to be around when they are meeting, not in business hours. So there are implications from that.

There are cross-crewing implications in how the EBA would impact on the CFA's capacity to employ part-time employees and also on training, development, uniforms et cetera. I go to this again. The UFU gave no evidence to the committee backing up their claims other than just dismissing out of hand the issues of the volunteers.