CFMEU’s day of reckoning has been a long time coming – but it’s not shocking | Caleb Bond

To pretend thuggery and corruption within the CFMEU is new is like suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull is the most humble PM in history, writes Caleb Bond.

The allegations of organised crime gangs infiltrating the CFMEU have been more than a little amusing.

What’s all the fuss about?

I thought the CFMEU was an organised crime gang.

It certainly acts like one – and has for a long time – which has made the feigned ignorance and shock of some Labor types laughable.

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke acted all indignant when he announced that independent administrators would be appointed to the union while federal police investigated allegations of corruption.

Mr Burke said “the number one job of any union is to look after its members” and that the “reported behaviour from the construction division of the CFMEU is the exact opposite of that obligation”.

“It’s abhorrent,” Mr Burke said.

“It’s intolerable. I said over the weekend that we would take action to address these issues and we are.”

Abhorrent and intolerable – Mr Burke is one angry man.

“Shocked” and angry employment and workplace relations minister, Tony Burke holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Where have you been for the past two years you’ve been in government, Mr Burke?

Oh, that’s right – he was busy dismantling the cop on the beat that helped keep militant unions such as the CFMEU in line, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

He bragged, at the time, that the government was “ending the unfair treatment of building and construction workers … to ensure construction workers have the same rights as other workers”.

He complained that the ABCC had “ridiculous powers” and that it was “a politicised and discredited organisation established by the previous government to target workers purely for ideological reasons”.

“It was set up by the Liberals and Nationals to discredit and dismantle unions and undermine the pay, conditions and job security of ordinary Australian workers,” Mr Burke said.

Right.

And now he says the CFMEU has potentially been up to abhorrent and intolerable conduct, has sent in the cops and is even considering having the union deregistered – just as its predecessor, the Builders Labourers Federation, was by Bob Hawke in 1986 for corruption.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I do wonder, though – what might have changed between those statements of Mr Burke in July 2022 and his statements of July 2024?

Gee, I guess we’ll never know.

Former CFMEU leader John Setka pictured in Adelaide. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

To pretend that thuggery, corruption and illegality within the CFMEU is new is like suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull is the most humble prime minister in Australian history.

John Setka – now departed from the union – and his cronies from the Victorian branch of the CFMEU took over the South Australian branch ostensibly because it was not militant enough.

Former secretary Aaron Cartledge, a more conciliatory unionist, was pushed out in 2018 and Andrew Sutherland was parachuted in from interstate. Neither Mr Setka nor Mr Sutherland is personally accused of any criminal wrongdoing.

Mr Sutherland was, in my brief dealings with him when we were both campaigning against the destruction of Shed 26 at Port Adelaide, pleasant and available despite our obvious ideological differences.

But he ultimately helped usher in Victorian control of the SA branch, expanding Mr Setka’s now crumbling empire.

The CFMEU’s day of reckoning has been a long time coming.

But let’s not pretend it’s shocking in any way.

The ALP was more than willing to take the CFMEU’s money and provide it support until the liabilities could be hidden no more.

So much for union solidarity.