00:01This saga goes back more than a decade and it all came to it in 2016.
00:06Now the UFU, the United Firefighters Union, were trying to get a new pay deal for the
00:11paid firefighters within the Country Fire Authority, the CFA.
00:14That began back in 2013, and by the time it got to 2016 with the new Labor Government
00:19who had promised to resolve this deal, Daniel Andrews essentially lost patience with his
00:24Minister Jane Garrett, the late Jane Garrett, and asked Senior Minister Gavin Jennings,
00:30this sort of left-hand man, to go and fix this.
00:32And what happened is that Gavin Jennings sat down with the UFU Secretary, Peter Marshall,
00:36and negotiated a deal in secret to resolve this dispute.
00:40Now this was rejected by Jane Garrett, she ultimately resigned, and there were lots of
00:44concerns and issues raised at the time that this deal was done improperly, and essentially
00:49a complaint was essentially first made that there was some sort of blackmail.
00:52Now IBAC has found there was no blackmail, but it triggered this investigation, which
00:56wrapped up about four years ago, but it's been held back by various and frequent court
01:02actions from the UFU disputing IBAC's both authority and its ability to release it, but
01:07finally it has been released this morning.
01:10What has the IBAC found?
01:15Look, it's found that there was some very serious and concerning behaviour about the way that
01:20Daniel Andrews, his senior ministers Gavin Jennings and Lisa Neville behaved, as well
01:24as senior public servants who were brought into this process, as well as the influence
01:29and access that Peter Marshall was given, the union secretary.
01:33The report found he was given extraordinary access over government decision-making and access
01:38to decision-makers.
01:39It says it raises serious concerns about the risk of corruption.
01:42It did however find that there was no corrupt conduct detected.
01:46For its part, people involved with this saying they were following a process and they were
01:50trying to resolve a dispute.
01:52Peter Marshall himself said he has done nothing wrong in standing up for his members and actually
01:56has attacked IBAC for its conduct, saying it went to court and was proved that it was actually
02:01upheld.
02:02And he's just said that he was sticking up for his members and he has no regrets.
02:06He spoke to us a short time ago.
02:08How many other organisations and lobby groups go and see parliamentarians?
02:13There is nothing wrong with what we've done.
02:16Absolutely nothing.
02:17I don't regret anything in relation to representing my members.
02:20Now, the questions will be how does the new Premier, Ben Carroll, deal with this?
02:25Will this stain his government?
02:27Will this have an effect on him?
02:28Will the public even care about this in the way?
02:31The question is, these deals were done behind closed doors and is that good enough?
02:35If IBAC says there needs to be much more transparency.
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