CORANGAMITE
Malcolm Turnbull paid tribute to volunteer firefighters caught in a bitter union dispute in Victoria as representing the "very best of the Australian spirit", as he took his campaign to the marginal Liberal seat of Corangamite. 
The Prime Minister yesterday pledged that changing the Fair Work Act would be an urgent -Coalition priority if it were re-elected to protect volunteer firefighters from takeover by the United Firefighters Union.
"You embody the very best of Australia, your selflessness, your courage, your volunteerism is the very best of us," he said at an early morning roundtable discussion in Geelong with Liberal MP Sarah Henderson, Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria president Nev Jones, and VFBV chief executive, Andrew Ford.
Mr Turnbull promised a new Coalition government would amend workplace laws in the first parliamentary sitting week to protect volunteerism. The pledge won strong support from firefighters in the room who said it would prove a vote-changer in Victoria.
He warned that the state Labor government's accommodation of union demands in the bitter dispute provided a glimpse of how Bill Shorten would run the country if elected on   July 2.
Premier Daniel Andrews has backed the UFU in its long--running struggle with the much larger volunteer-based Country Fire Authority. Emergency ser-vices minister Jane Garrett resigned in protest and the Premier sacked the CFA board and forced the resignation of its chief executive to ram through a new enterprise agreement.
Mr Turnbull has transformed the issue into a national test case against union militancy to buttress proposed tightening of industrial governance rules and the revival of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.John Zaina, first lieutenant of the Morrison and District Rural Fire Brigade, who described himself as a former Labor voter and attended the meeting with his daughter, said the issue would "change a lot of individual votes".