News

SitRep 37/2026

October 29, 2026

NOTICE OF SGM – OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER 2026

 Members are advised that an SGM will occur between 31 October 2026 and 9 November 2026. The SGM will be held concurrently with the AGM. The SGM will open on 31 October 2026 at 1000hrs at City of Sydney Fire Station, and will end on 9 November 2026 at 1000hrs at Kogarah Fire Station.

Meetings will be asked to open the AGM, consider and vote on the AGM items, close the AGM, and then open the SGM, consider and vote on the SGM items, and then close the SGM.

The AGM agenda can be found in SitRep 36/2026. The list of meetings can be found here.

The SGM agenda items can be found here.

You will note there are only two motions so far, as State Committee is still reflecting on our Award bargaining motions.

State Committee is meeting again tomorrow morning and will send final motions out as soon as possible.

The remaining motions cover Retained Reform, Regional Reliever Reform, Relativities, Permanent FF weekend loadings, and Rescue Allowance.

Award negotiations have been ongoing for weeks now, and are exploring some complex topics that will reform the way the Retained system works, and strengthen pay and conditions for Permanent Firefighters.

These SGM motions give members the opportunity to understand the negotiations so far, and to have direct input into where we go from here, as I promised to do when we last met at SGMs to endorse the initial Log of Claims.

I want to be clear – this is not a final sign off. This is an update outlining the current status of key principles on specific topics to continue negotiations, and for the membership to have the chance to inform our position on how we continue.

For awareness, we are negotiating under the Mutual Gains Bargaining system, which is a part of the new Industrial Relations reform. Under this system, a brief must go to the Government’s Expenditure Review Committee (ERC), which then decides what “funding parameters” the Department can formally negotiate with.

All work in bargaining up until now has been to prepare the brief to ERC which will be based on a concept of “mutual gains” to both parties. If endorsed by members at SGMs, these principles will in effect form the brief to go to ERC in November. This ERC meeting will likely be the last meeting of the ERC before Government goes into caretaker mode ahead of the State Election.

Does that matter? Yes and no. We would obviously like to see an agreed outcome that benefits members and sign off on an award we are happy with. That said, if ERC give back parameters that either your officials or members aren’t happy with, then it will be a totally different conversation than we are having now.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the members and officials who have dedicated their time and efforts into negotiations over the last month. Through these discussions, we have made some significant progress on key aspects of our Log of Claims.

Your Union’s goal is to secure pay and conditions in each Award round that deliver for FBEU members for decades to come. This has been delivered in previous years through preventing negative proposed changes, and achieving generational change where possible, and I am hopeful this Award round will continue this trend.

I will be attending over 30 regional AGM/SGMs along with officials via Teams in the coming weeks, to deliver the State Secretary’s report and to explain the Award process. I will also be attending the Sydney, Central Coast, Illawarra and Newcastle meetings in person.

More information will follow tomorrow with a final list of motions.

In Unity,

Leighton Drury
State Secretary

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