Ministers should be moved to work in the same offices as their directorate officials to correct a "powerful disconnect" between politicians and public servants in the ACT, a powerful outgoing union leader says.
Greg McConville, who led the United Firefighters Union in the ACT for more than a decade, also called for greater investment in the seniority and quality of ministers' advisers.
"You go up to the Assembly and, no disrespect to anyone, typically you're talking about staffers who are paid $80,000, maybe $100,000 a year, who are expected to assist the minister to hold to account bureaucrats who are paid in the hundreds of thousands," Mr McConville said in an interview to mark his departure.
"And those bureaucrats are very powerful. They're experienced. I'm not questioning that they've been hired on merit.
"But it's like trying to put a featherweight boxer in the ring with a heavyweight. And that imbalance has to be addressed."
Mr McConville said he used to think there were five ministers running the Justice and Community Safety Directorate, which oversees the Emergency Services Agency and the territory's firefighters.
"I was wrong. The Justice and Community Safety Directorate runs five ministers. And then there are other directorates which run other ministers," he said.
"And sometimes there are several directorates running the same person. That's got to be restructured. Because they're just full and stretched. And they don't have the critical mass to be able to challenge set directions within the bureaucracy."
Mr McConville said it was no secret he came to the ACT from Victoria, where a minister's office was typically in the same building as the department they oversaw.
"It's on typically the top floor. And they have access at all times to the most senior people in that bureaucracy. And it sends a very powerful message of accountability," he said.
Mr McConville said instead of ministers having a continuous presence among their public servants in the ACT, senior bureaucrats visited the Legislative Assembly to see their minister or appear before a parliamentary inquiry "every now and then".
"And then they go back on their merry way. And I think there's a powerful disconnect between the elected government and the bureaucracy," he said.
Mr McConville said "operators within the ACT government" were quite happy to see litigation over firefighters' entitlements as they transitioned to retirement drawn out.
"Some of these things just take way too long to deliver, and it's not the elected representatives' fault. I genuinely feel sorry for them, because if they have to put up with that sort of resistance around things like estimates, or budget hearings, or proper briefings on things like an electric firetruck, they get spun again, and it's very difficult for them to sort out the wheat from the chaff," he said.
Mr McConville led union fights against the ACT government and won repeatedly, delivering victories in clashes over pay, conditions, trucks, health screening, overtime, recruitment and promotion.
It was time to move on and let others help shape the future of the United Firefighters Union, he said.
"Ironically, some people say it's the people who don't want those jobs who are best suited to do them. And the people who really want them are the worst to have them. To some extent I think I agree with that," he said.
"But you've got to approach all these things with humility. And for me now, that humility has turned into gratitude. And my overall sense of doing this job is gratitude for the people who have shown up."
Mr McConville, never a firefighter himself, said he drew on thousands of years of collective firefighting wisdom in fights to deliver presumptive cancer screening, improved working conditions and shifts, retirement rights and PFAS remediation.
"I think unions have to redefine themselves to contemporary times, and there are challenges in that, some of which I don't have the answers to, and I think it's good reason for me to move on, for others to have a crack," he said.
Mr McConville said a society-wide shift to individualism and negativity bias were the two challenges for unions, but that created an opportunity for people to again see the power and value of the collective.
"You can't compel people to be a member of the union. And we don't, and there are some who aren't, and we respect that. But those who come through the door, pretty much all of them, they sign up up because they can see that we have a vision for them from recruitment to retirement," he said of the United Firefighters Union in the ACT.
Some of the union's most important wins have been to secure compensation for former firefighters whose work exposed them to toxic chemicals and left them with lasting health complications late in their careers and into retirement, he said.
Mr McConville said when arrived in the territory from Victoria, someone told him the ACT was a small jurisdiction with big jurisdiction problems.
"So to resolve a problem here around the fire service requires just as much work as it does with a fire service ten times the size in Victoria. And the resources that you need to do that are very similar, which means our members pay a disproportionate amount of money because we have to lawyer up," he said.
"We're in the Federal Court and our members can't understand why we have to litigate to get things that people sat down with us and agreed to. And I think that that's a fair misunderstanding."
Mr McConville told his members late last week he was leaving the union. He said the job took its toll, physically and mentally.
"For me, where it became really difficult was the 2019-20 fires coincided with enterprise bargaining and dovetailed into COVID. I got COVID and it hit me really hard. It really knocked me around and it coincided with the time where I was involved at the national level as well. And there was a transition in the national secretary role. It came at the worst possible time," he said.
"And during that I just felt that I was getting old and slowing down. I'd go for a walk and lower half of my body. I'd have to stop if I was going up a hill. In hindsight I wasn't out of breath. I was so tense and stressed that I was literally pulling myself to pieces."
Mr McConville said it was unsurprising he had some serious mental health issues but he was not ashamed of it or saying so.
"Because all of these things, they give us opportunities as people to improve ourselves and work on ourselves. And the big thing I've learned out of that ... looking after your mental health is much the same as looking after your physical health. If you don't work on it, it doesn't just happen by accident," he said.
"I think the other thing is, genuinely listening to people. People say to you things like, look after yourself. Like me. And you should not dismiss it."
Mr McConville paid special tribute to the firefighters who stepped forward to serve. The equipment, trucks and techniques might change, but humans still step forward for others in their worst times.
"Having a fire service that has those people in it makes us different to a lot of other societies. Because the sense of well-being that you get from knowing when you pick up that phone and you call that there will be someone there at your worst time creates a sense of well-being that you just can't replace, and you can't put a price on," he said.
