A quick fact check.
Who is to blame for what the Fire Services Review described as a “serious and fundamental disconnect between the senior management and operational firefighters?”
Doubtless in response to the Liberals’ attempts to blame the UFU or Peter Marshall, Minister James Merlino has reportedly said “no one side is to blame”:
Is this consistent with the findings of the Fire Services Review?
The answer is: yes, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Let’s look at what the Fire Services Review actually said about the relevance of the industrial context to spiralling morale.
The section (beginning on p. 33) begins with a long, damning portrayal of the actions perpetrated against firefighters by management, with coalition encouragement:
Only after this lengthy evisceration of the coalition-linked senior management does the Review turn to the union’s role, and then only for half a sentence before launching back into the condemnation of the actions of management under the coalition government:
After a relatively blame-free paragraph (omitted here— do check if you don’t believe me) the Review again spends a single sentence acknowledging that the union is not blameless, before returning to talk about the damage done to the workforce and workplace culture by the actions of senior management.
With that concluding call to action was all the independent justification the government would have needed to launch a shake-up of the senior leadership of both organisations, resetting the relationship between management and staff, and setting the parameters for healing. Just as the Andrews government did with Ambulance Victoria.
Instead, what happened was Jane Garrett suppressed the report for five months while referring to it in misleading ways to smear firefighters. The irony of this is astounding, considering the report’s findings, highlighted above, that the government and management launched a negative media campaign against firefighters.
So, back to the question.
Were both sides to blame?
Yes, but according to the Fire Services Review, one side ought to bear much more blame than the other. The instigator and most aggressive prosecutor of the industrial war was the coalition-linked senior managements of CFA and MFB.
Why doesn’t James Merlino spell this out? He has all the ammunition he needs in the Fire Services Review. Is he scared to contradict Garrett’s misleading angle on it? I guess it’s not a good look to reveal to the public that one of your own party ran a five-month campaign of deliberately misleading spin against emergency service workers.
Nevertheless, the public deserves to know, and firefighters deserve vindication. Let’s hope James Merlino does the right thing.
