View from The Hill: If it’s serious about CFMEU, Labor should decline its money

Listening to the politicians and union leaders, one could be forgiven for thinking Nine’s Nick McKenzie and his journalist colleagues were the only ones aware of the nefarious activities in the CFMEU.

Amid the revelations from Nine’s investigation, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke told the ABC on Sunday “all options” for action were on the table, and he had asked for departmental advice.

By Monday morning the union’s national secretary Zach Smith had put the Victorian branch into administration.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan whipped off a request for Labor’s national executive to suspend the CFMEU’s construction division from the Victorian Labor Party. She also asked Victorian Labor “to immediately pause political donations from the CFMEU”.

Anthony Albanese declared “zero tolerance” for the union’s bad behaviour. ACTU secretary Sally McManus said there was “no place whatsoever” for criminal activities in unions: the ACTU executive will meet on Wednesday to discuss matters.

The allegations made in the Nine reports include thuggery, standover tactics, the parachuting of senior bikie figures into lucrative union delegate roles on major Victorian construction projects, kickbacks, and much else.

The series is a remarkable expose. But it is hard to credit that senior players, including the minister, his department, the national office of the union, and federal authorities were not able to find out what was happening without the assistance of McKenzie and co.

Surely, some of them would have had their ears to the ground. If they didn’t, it can only be put down to incompetence or that they didn’t seriously seek to hear (despite all those visits to construction sites in hi-vis).

After he became opposition leader, Anthony Albanese drove the union’s strong man, John Setka, out of the Labor Party, following his disparaging the work of Rosie Batty, a campaigner against domestic violence. But the union movement could not dislodge him. McManus urged him to quit his union post for the good of the movement, to no effect.

In 2020 the union’s national secretary Michael O'Connor (one of the union’s good guys and brother of federal minister Brendan O'Connor) quit his post after prolonged pressure from Setka’s construction division. His apparent sin was not defending Setka following his conviction for harassing his wife.

It was only last Friday, facing the Nine expose, that Setka (who had been due to leave his position later this year) suddenly resigned as Victorian and Tasmanian secretary of the union.

Labor in government has twice bowed to what the CFMEU – and the wider union movement – wanted: the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the so-called cop-on-the-beat.

The Gillard government got rid of the ABCC. The Coalition restored it. Tony Burke scrapped it again. Burke was so anxious to act that he defanged the body ahead of having the legislation passed.

Burke said on Sunday the allegations reported in the Nine expose (to that point) related to when the ABCC was in operation.

“It completely failed, for the simple reason that the whole concept of it was wrong from the beginning, which was about pushing people into their corners,” Burke said.

“That’s what it was about, and that meant that you would always in those situations empower the most militant players. That’s what happens when you push people into their corners.”

This sounded like a stretch. But accepting the ABCC was ineffective, the latest revelations suggest it should have been beefed up, not scrapped.

The government recently rushed through parliament legislation to allow the manufacturing part of the CFMFU to split off.

Nine reported this followed a long campaign by CFMEU’s assistant national secretary Leo Skourdoumbis. For his trouble Skourdoumbis received what Nine described as “a menacing nighttime visit” by Setka to the family home, where he dumped a suitcase with the words “LEO THE DOG” scrawled on it. The incident was captured by a neighbour’s CCTV.

A few years ago the Morrison government legislated to allow the mining and energy division to leave the union.

Its members were anxious to take the exit path. A resolution said: “The ruthless use of raw numbers against the smaller divisions; the disrespect and disregard shown to the views of mining and energy workers; and the public undermining of our former national secretary [Michael O'Connor] to settle a personal score, is simply intolerable.

"It is clear that there is no longer a place of equality and dignity for the mining and energy division within the amalgamated union.”

What the union and the government – which was expected to discuss the situation at Monday’s cabinet meeting – do now must be judged in terms of actions, not fighting or reassuring words.

Burke might be right in noting deregistration could be counterproductive, just reducing the regulation of the union rather than enhancing it.

The union, pledging to change its ways, will want to be left, to the greatest extent possible, to reform itself. Zach Smith is one of the up-and-comers of the union movement, with a lot to prove.

But after all that’s gone before, the union can’t be trusted to clean out its Augean stables. Burke must recognise this – he said on Monday the union’s response so far was “progress, but falls short”.

The government needs to use its powers to impose independent administrators or some other process.

Labor also should show its seriousness by putting a moratorium on political donations from the union (whose construction division donated $1 million to the federal party for the last election). When asked about this on Monday, the prime minister dodged the questions. He said such matters were for the party organisation.

Labor’s national executive will meet this week, to discuss the Allan request and, no doubt, the question of donations. We’ll see whether “everything” is really on the table, as the government says.