An eight-year-long investigation into negotiations between the Andrews government and the firefighters’ union has found “serious and concerning conduct” by Victorian ministers, MPs and public servants.

The findings were contained in Operation Richmond, an investigation led by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) that began in 2018, and which was suppressed for years by legal challenges, despite the watchdog’s efforts to have it made public.

Tabled in parliament on Wednesday, the IBAC report identified serious issues in the way pay deals with the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) were negotiated alongside the establishment of Fire Rescue Victoria. However, it stopped short of finding corrupt conduct – for which Victoria has a higher threshold than any other state.

“IBAC found that senior members of government acted contrary to established policies, procedures, codes of conduct and conventions in negotiating a deal with the secretary of the United Firefighters Union [UFU], Mr Peter Marshall, for the CFA Enterprise Bargaining Agreement [EBA] without the knowledge and involvement of the responsible minister, agencies and department,” Commissioner Victoria Elliott said at the start of the report.

“By doing so, the government placed itself in a position where Mr Marshall was able to exert extraordinary influence over the negotiations for both the CFA EBA and the MFB EBA.”

The report covers a period when Daniel Andrews was premier of Victoria. The CFA pay deal became a political flashpoint for his government, and the late Jane Garrett resigned as emergency services minister and quit cabinet because she disagreed with her government’s moves to accept UFU demands.

“The government placed itself in a position where Mr Marshall was able to exert extraordinary influence.”Delayed Operation Richmond report

“During the period investigated, IBAC also found that Mr Marshall was afforded privileged access to senior members of government which, in many cases, were not disclosed and were to the exclusion of other key stakeholders,” the report said.

“Operation Richmond highlights how government leaders, including ministers and the premier, can undermine established checks and balances when they fail to model high integrity standards and act as stewards of good governance.”

The report was originally scheduled for release by the end of June, but was delayed by an unsuccessful legal challenge from Marshall.

Operation Richmond began after IBAC received allegations that Marshall had blackmailed or compromised the premier to change his position on the 2016 CFA pay deal. The blackmail claim was never substantiated.

The investigation was widened to include negotiations for a pay deal with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade and the creation of its replacement, Fire Rescue Victoria.

Ultimately, it found that in 2016 Andrews authorised then special minister of state Gavin Jennings, with the assistance of Tony Bates – a deputy secretary at the Department of Premier and Cabinet – to negotiate the CFA deal directly without the knowledge of the CFA themselves.

“While in negotiations on 11 April 2016, Minister Jennings referred to being ‘off doing my secret mission’ and ‘secret business’ in text messages to staff in his office and the PPO [Premier’s Private Office],” the report said.

“Private meetings were held with the UFU in rented meeting spaces and a hotel. Those involved were instructed to keep the meetings confidential.”

After four days of negotiations, the two sides agreed to terms and Jennings texted Andrews: “Handshake has occurred – it’s done!”

Once these negotiations were finished, IBAC found, a document outlining the terms was presented to cabinet as a proposal from the union, with ministers – including Garrett – unaware they had been negotiated with people inside government.

Marshall summarised these meetings years later in an intercepted phone call from 2019, where the UFU chief told a ministerial adviser the pay deal was “was negotiated with f---in’ Jennings in a back room. It was endorsed by f---in’ Andrews and cabinet.”

On April 13, 2016, Marshall met with Andrews and a staffer for what IBAC viewed as a staged event so that there could be a witness to the agreement being presented to government as a “proposal” from the union.

Evidence from Bates appeared to support this assessment. The senior public servant told investigators he led the development of the deal and “if there was a presentation of the agreement to the premier’s office I would categorise it as ceremonial”.

Even after cabinet’s expenditure committee signed off on the deal on April 19, Garrett and the CFA remained opposed to it.

Garrett told IBAC she was contacted by a federal Labor senator to persuade her to progress the deal with the Fair Work Commission.

The CFA agreed to return to the commission in May and resume conciliation, but Marshall resisted any attempts to compromise on the EBA and would not budge on the veto clauses.

On May 23, the premier sent a text message to Jennings asking how mediation was progressing. Jennings responded: “At 11am he [Marshall] was convinced you were a treacherous c--- and I was a f---ing idiot ... By lunchtime he was giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

The IBAC report said evidence gathered through Operation Richmond showed Andrews wanted to end the pay dispute in a way that excluded Garrett, then emergency services minister, whom he didn’t believe could resolve the matter.

“At the time of the decision, the premier was facing internal political pressure, negative media attention and industrial unrest,” the report said.

But IBAC found that in secretly excluding Garrett, the CFA and other key parts of government from the process, the premier, Jennings and Bates had behaved contrary to “government policy, procedures, convention and their respective codes of conduct”.

It also found the undisclosed negotiations limited the state’s bargaining position and their ability to resist Marshall’s demands.

A key concern among those who did not support the deal were clauses that required the CFA to “consult and agree” with the UFU on decisions before they could be made.

They became known as “veto clauses”, which effectively allowed the union to increase its control of the CFA by blocking policies it did not agree with.

Garrett quit cabinet in June 2016 because she considered the pay deal unacceptable, and when the CFA board refused to endorse the agreement they were stood down and replaced. Their successors signed off on the arrangement.

At the same time, Marshall expected the terms of the CFA deal to be replicated in a pay deal with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.

One former MFB chief executive told IBAC that they had concerns similar to the CFA’s, including that some elements of the deal were unlawful or undermined safety obligations.

“Ultimately, to resolve the dispute, the government appointed new members to the MFB board who understood the government’s preferred position on the MFB EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement],” the report said.

IBAC also raised concerns about the way a 2019 bill that reformed the fire services was passed – which ultimately turned the MFB and the paid parts of the CFA into a new body named Fire Rescue Victoria.

The corruption watchdog found Marshall had sought to secure the support of a crossbench MP by hiring their relative days before it was due for a vote in the upper house.

In an intercepted phone call from June 2019, Marshall told a friend the MP was “100 per cent behind us … just to make sure we just employed [their relative].”

The investigation also found Marshall had privileged access to Lisa Neville, who served as emergency services minister from 2018 to 2019, and sought to influence her decision on who should be appointed commissioner of the new agency.

“While IBAC makes no findings as to whether Mr Marshall did influence the minister on

the appointment of the FRV Commissioner, IBAC found that the minister’s stakeholder management of Mr Marshall created significant opportunities for him to do so,” the report said.

“Finally, during this period, IBAC also found evidence that an MFB board member, Mr Greg Sword, shared confidential information with Mr Marshall in 2019 in breach of his professional obligations.”

Premier Ben Carroll said on Wednesday morning he had not yet read the report in full, but had received some “high-level advice” and that his government would accept IBAC’s recommendations.

Carroll said the report laid bare intolerable and unacceptable behaviour.

Asked whether the conduct of Andrews and others in the report would be considered corrupt under the expanded definition of corruption the premier pledged to adopt after being appointed leader last week, Carroll said he would first read the IBAC report carefully.

“I am going to study it and give Victorians the actions and answers they deserve,” he said.