Victoria’s fire agency has spent $8.8 million on external lawyers over the past two years as a long-running pay dispute with the state’s firefighting union and its firebrand secretary enters its final stages.

A three-year battle from the United Firefighters Union over a new enterprise agreement could be decided by the end of the year now that a final determination, which started with secretary Peter Marshall asking for annual pay rises of 8.6 per cent in 2022, is in the hands of the Fair Work Commission.

A result will cap off one of the more lengthy and costly union negotiations for the Allan government and bring to a head tensions that have lingered since the early days of the Andrews government.

In a sign of how costly the process has become, documents obtained under freedom of inform

See Full Page