CFMEU boss John Setka’s influence is well and truly being felt in South Australia | David Penberthy

No one swears quite like CFMEU chief John Setka. But his potty mouth isn’t the only thing our state has been graced with since his arrival, David Penberthy says.

** Warning: this column contains heaps of offensive language. That’s because it’s about John Setka and the construction workers union the CFMEU **

I spent about two years trying to get John Setka to talk to me.

I had spoken to his media people repeatedly and developed a good relationship with his genial and intelligent former national boss, the now retired Dave Noonan, who led the union for years and was pivotal to the success of its superannuation arm CBUS.

Setka would never call, probably annoyed by our coverage of his ruthless expansion into South Australia.

That process started when the Victorian construction union chief took aim at former SA CFMEU secretary Aaron Cartledge, labelling the SA branch “weak c***s” who “deserved a good f**king” after learning that some SA construction workers were still on the tools over the summer holidays.

Setka thought they should all be on leave, regardless of whether their enterprise agreement had been varied to reflect their efforts, and used this as his launching point for a protracted campaign to take over in SA.

Last year I was driving down to Aldinga on a Friday arvo when my hands free phone rang, the name flashing up “John Setka”.

I hit answer and he said “Hey mate if you’re going to keep writing pieces about what a f**king a***hole I am I thought I’d better ring to say gidday”.

As fast as I could I explained to Setka that he was on speaker phone with my kids in the car and could I call him back in 20 minutes.

“F**k mate I’m sorry” he said and hung up.

I turned around to find the kids staring forwards with their mouths agape asking who the man was who had just filled up the swear jar.

That man, kids, was John Setka. They hadn’t heard language like that since the previous weekend’s Crows game.

When I got to Aldinga I rang him back and spent half an hour on the phone, much of it stifling laughter as Setka offered his profanity-laden take on life, the universe and everything.

I am not sure if you would call it a charm offensive but it was certainly offensive, in an engaging way for those of us who grew up listening to Derek and Clive tapes and enjoying movies like Chopper.

CFMEU boss John Setka. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

The guy uses swear words like others use the words “the” and “and”.

His takes on prominent South Australian figures made for entertaining listening.

On Malinauskas: “That bloke is in the wrong f**king party”.

On Will Frogley, the local head of the Master Builders Association: “I took him out for beers in Melbourne and we had a bloody good night and then he’s in the paper saying I’m the prince of f**king darkness. You can’t bloody win with some people.”

However repellent he might be there are two qualities that give Setka a brutal sincerity.

His politics are informed by the fact that his father survived the West Gate Bridge collapse, riding a girder through the sky and somehow surviving to tell the tale, a seminal moment which underpins his militancy.

He is regarded with adulation for his loyalty by people who lost partners and children in construction deaths, good people such as Adelaide man Jorge Castillo-Riffo, whose death on a scissor lift working at the new RAH in 2014 was an avoidable disgrace for which just recompense was never delivered.

With these two caveats it would be fair say that John Setka is completely out of step behaviourally with the Australia mainstream and totally at odds with the collaborative nature of the modern workplace.

John Setka (left) has had some choice words about the ex commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and current AFL umpiring chief Stephen McBurney (right).

His behaviour over the past month shows that he is not only comfortable with extortionate conduct, but will go on the record promising to engage in it, as he has done repeatedly with AFL umpiring chief Stephen McBurney, a former Commissioner with the former Australian Building and Construction Commission dismantled by the Albanese Government.

All McBurney ever did in that role was uphold the law in prosecuting the CFMEU for monstering non-unionists and illegally jeopardising construction work for industrial gain.

By abolishing the ABCC, Albo turned John Setka into a big foul-mouthed chicken who has come home to roost, threatening to follow McBurney to his occupational grave and labelling anyone a weak you-know-what for challenging him.

Setka’s role in Victoria with that Incolink workers entitlement outfit is a testament to the supine nature of Victoria’s construction industry in the face of extortionate union power, to borrow a line from that juvenile, macho chant so loved by the CFMEU organisers.

In a classic case of if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em, this organisation has become a cash cow for both the Victorian Master Builders and the CFMEU itself, channelling millions back to both organisations through member payments.

It is an extraordinary conceit that they now want to take over the existing scheme BIRST in SA and are looking at doing so in other states as they consolidate power nationally out of Victoria.

The irony of all this is that Anthony Albanese has done more than anyone in the ALP to stand up to Setka by securing his expulsion from the ALP, yet in a material sense emboldened him by abolishing any meaningful oversight of this rogue union.

And I say rogue because it is the way Setka has styled himself, and the union, in his own f**k-the-lot-of-youse image.

Setka, and in his looming absence Setkaism, is officially here in SA with the branch under militant Victorian control.

All this in our state where workers and management have historically worked collaboratively, without any of Setka’s up-the-bosses bullsh*t.