This whole Shemozzle with the CFA started when the CFA had a lot of losses in equipment in some big fires and the Government stepped in to give them money to refit as the lamington sales were insufficient to raise the cash needed
The problem here is that government bureaucrats will NEVER lose control of any of their money so the conditions were included and the CFA started to lose control of it's organisation
This union thing is the latest in the scheme to totally control the volunteer organization.
GO and talk to some CFA guys who were in the organization 15 + years ago, they were a local based self help group to look after their neighbors, now they are a bureaucratic monolith under the control of the union
So things have changed