Victoria’s CFMEU boss John Setka enjoys an inordinate level of influence over the Australian Labor Party

CFMEU boss John Setka is enjoying an inordinate level of power over the ALP – and Labor’s attempts to put an end to it have been laughable, writes David Penberthy.

For a bloke who is apparently persona non grata, Victoria’s CFMEU boss John Setka enjoys a growing level of authority within the labour movement and an inordinate level of influence over the Australian Labor Party.

This is the man whom our now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanded be expelled from the ALP on what could accurately and broadly be described as moral grounds. In the PM’s eyes, Setka’s transgressions were profound and multiple.

The trigger for Albanese’s repulsion against Setka – the straw that broke the camel’s back, to use a cliche – were his reported 2019 remarks about domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, where Setka is alleged to have complained that the activism of this woman (whose son was bashed to death with a cricket bat by her savage ex) meant men could no longer get a fair hearing on DV issues.

CFMEU Victorian secretary John Setka participates in a rally in Adelaide, October 2019. Picture: AAP Image / Kelly Barnes

Setka insists his remarks were taken out of context, and that he regards Batty as a hero. Albanese was having none of it. He had other issues with Setka anyway, such as the menace he showed towards Australian Building and Construction Commission inspectors and their children in comments at a 2017 union rally.

“Let me give a dire warning to them ABCC inspectors, be careful what you do.” Setka told supporters in Melbourne that day.

“We will lobby their neighbourhoods, we will tell them who lives in that house and what he does for a living, or she, and we will go to their local footy club. We’ll go to their local shopping centre. They will not be able to show their faces anywhere.”

“Their kids will be ashamed of who their parents are when we expose all these ABCC inspectors.”

The comments were seen as so repugnant that the Morrison government referred them to the police, a move with which Albanese agreed.

I “repudiate them”, he said of the remarks.

Setka also involved his own kids in his campaign against the ABCC, posting a picture of them on Twitter holding a placard telling the corruption watchdog to “go and get
f--ked”, which he later deleted.

His troubled relationship with his estranged wife has also been the subject of court hearings where his profanity-laden text messages to her emerged in evidence.

Fast forward to 2022.

With all this as background we now have a situation in South Australia where Labor, the same party that brought you the gender equality group Emily’s List, is bankrolled to the tune of $125,000 by the union outfit led by John Setka.

That’s the John Setka who described his wife among other things as a “treacherous Aussie f--king c--t”, in comments which prompted a Melbourne Magistrate to direct him to attend a men’s behavioural program.

It’s also the same John Setka who in 2016 declared the SA branch of the CFMEU were “weak c--ts” who deserved “a good f--king” after he discovered during an Adelaide visit that construction workers were on the job in late December, when in his view they should have all been on holidays.

Setka’s white-anting of the SA branch and its former state secretary Aaron Cartledge is now complete.

He is set to be installed officially as the state secretary of the union here in SA, meaning that, along with his control of the Victorian and Tasmanian branches, he now runs construction in half the country.

There are three big things Premier Peter Malinauskas said in the lead-up to his election victory in March.

Premier Peter Malinauskas’ attempts to keep three election promises have been “laughable”, writes David Penberthy. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

He wanted to lead a government that supported business, he believed a key goal of Labor was the expansion of the middle class, and he also wanted to put an end to party political donations from unions and business.

Oh, and three days before polling day, SA Labor accepted a $125,000 donation from the Setka-led Victorian CFMEU.

Labor’s attempts thus far to rationalise all this have been laughable.

The war between John Setka and Albo heats up, 2019. Cartoon: Warren Brown

I have heard from several Labor figures that none of them know Setka, have ever met or spoken with Setka, and that the donation was sought by head office, not from anyone in the parliamentary party.

It is dissembling of the most pathetic kind.

Everyone in the SA Labor Party must have known – especially after the explosion in fines for industrial law breaches by the SA CFMEU the past few years under de facto Victorian control – that the cash for any locally sought donation would ultimately come from the Vics.

That is, from the branch led by John Setka, the man Albo wanted out of the party.

Malinauskas cannot credibly have any relationship with the CFMEU Victorian branch while claiming to support business. Although perhaps he can argue that his vision of an expanding middle class is evidenced by the extortionate new enterprise agreements construction firms such as Built Pty Ltd are now signing locally with the now-militant SA CFMEU.

John Setka on his way to receive a booster COVID jab at a mobile bus clinic in Footscray, January 2022. Picture: David Crosling

These agreements include a rostered day off every fortnight, all overtime now being set at double time, a two-year income-protection plan for any member who is injured or falls ill while outside of work, and an annual paid union picnic day.

The base pay rate of $52.39 per hour ($102,752 a year) for entry-level construction workers quickly blows out with tiered bonuses for workers operating at increasing building heights, travel allowances of $35 a day and a daily meal allowance of $21.

It’s one way to enter the middle class, I suppose.

Conveniently enough, our Premier has been on a two-week break while all this has been happening, and as such has not been troubled for comment.

The more generously minded would say that everyone deserves a holiday, even though no such slack was cut to our former PM on his jaunt to Hawaii.

Scott Morrison can at least provide Malinauskas with a line to defend SA Labor’s actions on all this.

I don’t hold the donation tin, mate.

A pathetic excuse, clearly, but about the only one he has got.