IBAC found no corrupt conduct in Victoria's firefighters deal, but named the man now running its schools

Victoria's anti corruption commission published its Operation Richmond special report on Wednesday 5 August 2026. It found serious and concerning conduct by senior public officers, including ministers and members of parliament, during enterprise bargaining negotiations with the United Firefighters Union between 2016 and 2019 and during the establishment of Fire Rescue Victoria in 2019. It did not find corrupt conduct, which under the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Act 2011 must amount to a criminal offence.

Two days later The Mandarin reported that Tony Bates, the Secretary of the Victorian Department of Education, had stood aside in the wake of the report. The conduct attributed to him in it dates from his earlier job as a deputy secretary at the Department of Premier and Cabinet, a decade before he took charge of the state's schools.

The investigation began in 2018 after complaints alleging corrupt conduct in the Country Fire Authority agreement negotiations, including an allegation that union secretary Peter Marshall had blackmailed the then premier, Daniel Andrews. IBAC found no evidence of blackmail. It then widened the inquiry to the former Metropolitan Fire Brigade agreement and the creation of Fire Rescue Victoria.

What it did find, according to its own media release, is that in 2016 a back room deal with Marshall was authorised by the then premier and negotiated by the then special minister of state, Gavin Jennings, with assistance from Bates, then a deputy secretary at the Department of Premier and Cabinet. The Country Fire Authority and the responsible minister, Jane Garrett, were excluded. IBAC found the actions of the premier, Jennings and Bates over this period were contrary to government policy, procedures, convention and their respective codes of conduct.

The release lists further examples. The CFA board was dismissed after it failed to endorse an agreement it did not know was built on the undisclosed union deal, and replacement members were appointed outside proper procedure because they were thought likely to follow the government's directions. Confidential information was given to Marshall by an MFB board member and, twice, by Bates. IBAC found that the then emergency services minister Lisa Neville's handling of Marshall gave him privileged access and, combined with a lack of transparency, created significant risk of corrupt conduct as he sought to influence the choice of Fire Rescue Victoria Commissioner.

Commissioner Victoria Elliott said Operation Richmond "exposed a series of enduring corruption risks" and made three recommendations: legislation for a statement of values for ministers and a published, reviewed Ministerial Code of Conduct; a published Ministerial Handbook covering Westminster conventions; and updated ministerial training on relationships with interest groups and lobbyists.

The ABC's account of the report, published 6 August, adds detail from the documents. Jennings texted about being "off doing my secret mission" in April 2016 before spending 12 April in a hotel room booked by Marshall, with Bates present. "Handshake has occurred, it's done!" Jennings texted Andrews afterwards. The following day Andrews and Marshall staged a meeting at 1 Treasury Place so that a staffer would witness the union proposal being handed over to Garrett, who did not know it had already been settled in a hotel room. Garrett refused to endorse the agreement and resigned from cabinet. She died in 2022. Her family welcomed the report's release and said she could not in good conscience endorse the agreement.

Andrews issued a statement saying there were "no findings in relation to corrupt conduct" about him, any other member of the government or the public service, and that the dispute "needed to be resolved in the public interest, and it was". Marshall attacked the investigation, telling the ABC it consumed eight years and an estimated eight million dollars of public money without a single corrupt conduct finding, and describing IBAC's surveillance methods as extreme. Both figures are Marshall's, not IBAC's.

The report's release had been fought over. On 3 July 2026 Justice Claire Harris of the Victorian Supreme Court dismissed a judicial review application by the union and Marshall aimed at stopping publication, and IBAC undertook not to release the report while an appeal was considered.

Premier Ben Carroll, who is not named in the report, said on the day of publication that he had not read it in full but accepted all its recommendations, and noted he was not in cabinet when the matters began. News24 reported the same day that Bates appears 196 times in the report, that IBAC found he had breached the Public Sector Code of Conduct alongside former departmental secretary Chris Eccles, and that the report found Bates improperly interfered by directing the MFB not to use a law firm Jennings disliked. Opposition leader Jess Wilson called on Carroll to sack him.

There is a discrepancy in the record of how Bates got the education job. Government News reported on 28 August 2025 that he had been acting secretary since March and that Premier Jacinta Allan congratulated him on the permanent appointment. News24 described him in August 2026 as a bureaucrat Carroll "personally appointed" the previous year.

What is not settled is the status of the education department's leadership. The Mandarin reported the stand aside on 7 August. The Victorian government's own ministers and key staff page still listed Bates as secretary when checked on 17 August, and no acting secretary had been named on it. Neither the premier's office nor the department has published a statement about the arrangement.