A Labor minister stood up to an aggressive union leader. The experience broke her.

Victorian Firefighters Union leader Peter Marshall was a relentless warrior for his members. His greatest victim may have been Jane Garrett, the emergency services minister who was broken, physically and mentally, by a fight she found herself with the union and her government.

On Wednesday, four years after her death from cancer, Ms Garrett received a posthumous vindication for her refusal to give Mr Marshall special treatment during pay negotiations a decade ago.

Then premier Daniel Andrews agreed to a secret deal with the firefighters union in 2016 that breached government policy and codes of conduct and was kept from Ms Garrett and the Country Fire Authority, according to a long-awaited report from the State’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission tabled in Parliament today.

Although the deal was not corrupt, the Government gave Mr Marshall special access that he used in wage negotiations and over the 2019 creation of Fire Rescue Victoria, creating a “significant risk of corrupt conduct”, the agency’s investigation Operation Richmond found.

Even though the events are historical, the Coalition cited them as an example of dubious behaviour by the Government over 11 years in power. With an election four months away, Liberal leader Jess Wilson said the Labor Party was running a “gangster Government”.

Victorians have been waiting more than five years for the results of the investigation, which was set up to investigate allegations of blackmail within the Government led by Mr Andrews, who retired from politics in 2023. A defiant Mr Marshall remains in charge of the union. He boasted today that two IBAC investigations had failed to find evidence of union corruption.

In 2016, Ms Garrett told me in a not-for-attribution interview that Mr Marshall had threatened during a phone call to hit her with an axe. She filed a formal complaint, according to the IBAC report. Mr Marshall denied the threat in private evidence to the agency.

Without taking a position on the allegation, the anti-corruption agency accused Mr Marshall of engaging in problematic behaviour as he sought to obtain large pay rises for his members and influence the creation of Fire Rescue Victoria from 2017 to 2019.

Axe allegation

A softly spoken inner-city lawyer, Ms Garrett told IBAC that she found Mr Marshall “very abusive, very threatening”.

“Mr Marshall is notoriously difficult to deal with and has been for many years,” she said. “He has a very violent temper and is known for not coping very well if things don’t go his way.”

She said a ministerial adviser asked to take on the emergency services portfolio refused in part because they were already “terrorised by dealing with Mr Marshall”. Another Government witness told IBAC a senior ministerial adviser “was very close to a nervous breakdown over the way Pete had treated (them)”.

In March 2016, Mr Andrews put Special Minister of State Gavin Jennings and the then deputy of the Premier’s Department, Tony Bates, in charge of negotiating a “back-room deal” with the union that Ms Garrett was excluded from, according to IBAC.

The union leader was not a believer in the right to disconnect from work.

One adviser said he called Mr Andrews at 4am. The then-premier answered. In May 2016, Mr Marshall texted Mr Jennings at 1.15am, 1.16am and 1.20am to express concern the Government would not honour a wages deal. At 5.25am that morning he texted again. “You awake need to talk urgently if possible,” he wrote.

A week later he texted Mr Jennings at 3.49am, raising concerns about the wages deal, requesting a detailed update about a board meeting the previous day and requesting he call back in the morning.

Mr Andrews had been warned by his staff about Mr Marshall’s behaviour the previous year.

“Marshall has crossed the line in recent months as to what would be considered acceptable behaviour,” he was told in a 2015 memo that recommended the premier “consider asking Marshall to be more respectful to all Ministers, members, staff and Departments and to treat them with the respect he would demand himself”.

Resignation and death

Mr Andrews denied that Mr Marshall received special access to the Government. IBAC disagreed. The union leader exerted “extraordinary influence”, it said today.

“While IBAC recognises that Mr Marshall’s engagement style presented a formidable challenge for the government, IBAC considers that it was the government’s decision to enter into an undisclosed deal with Mr Marshall that gave him a unique degree of access to government staffers, leverage to make demands and created expectations of preferential treatment.

“It also meant the government (including the Premier) did not take visible or effective action to address Mr Marshall’s inappropriate conduct. This failure exposed individuals to harm, set a poor cultural standard within the Victorian public sector and fostered public perceptions of favouritism among the broader community.”

Ms Garrett told IBAC she felt “very deeply let down” by the Government over Mr Marshall’s behaviour. In June, 2016, she refused to support a deal with the union she wasn’t allowed to negotiate, forcing her resignation. The Country Fire Authority board also declined, and was fired.

Five months later Ms Garrett disclosed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in July 2022, aged 49.

“She loved the Labor Party and loved the union movement,” close friend and former Liberal MP Tim Smith said today. “She was a lawyer and loved people adhering to the law and she believed those characters told lies and they breached the peace.

“Plenty of people in the parliamentary Labor Party, including the Premier of Victoria (Ben Carroll), I know completely agreed with her at the time. The Premier of Victoria is a decent bloke. He is not from the Labor left and he knows what craziness went on and I hope that he rights those wrongs.”