David Penberthy: Why did Labor ignore its Setka problem for so long?

John Setka’s been calling people c***s, dogs and maggots for years, yet remained head of one of Australia’s most powerful unions. How did Labor ignore the warnings for so long, asks David Penberthy.

In Christmas 2016 Victorian construction union boss John Setka travelled to Adelaide with his family for the festive season.

This pleasant family break was spoiled by one thing.

The CFMEU chief was furious to see that some SA construction workers were still at work over the holiday period at several Adelaide building sites.

No matter that thousands of other workers around the city were still working, too, or that these construction workers had their own holidays scheduled for a different time of year.

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Setka became so enraged by the fact that they were working at all that he interrupted his own holiday to fire off a typically foul-mouthed email to the CFMEU’s national leadership threatening vengeance against the SA branch of the construction union, setting in tow a chain of events that would culminate with the forced departure of former SA CFMEU secretary, Aaron Cartledge, and his deputy Jim O’Connor.

The email says everything you need to know about the militant and profane style of John Setka, who is now at the centre of a stand-off with Labor’s leadership about his relationship with the ALP.

CFMEU Victorian secretary John Setka has a long history of questionable behaviour. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty

“Happy New Year to everyone, sorry for the message while everyone’s on holidays except for SA construction workers! As some of you will know, I am on holidays with my family in Adelaide, to my shock when I arrived on the 29th of December a number of jobs including the Hansen Yuncken job on North Terrace was working. This is what this branch has been reduced too [sic], what a disgrace, as far as I am concerned the officials of this branch deserve a good f***ing for this, they are a useless bunch of weak c***s and that’s being kind. On our first executive meeting for 2017 I will be recommending that we give these bludging f***ers no money until we get some answers, as for the poor workers here in South Australia, you don’t want to know what they said about the union. I hope that Aaron and his crew are having a good holiday with their families.”

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Aaron Cartledge and Jim O’Connor were forced aside from their CFMEU leadership positions last year. Their authority had been shredded following the CFMEU’s national takeover in 2017 of the SA branch, at John Setka’s behest, as outlined in his email.

It came despite the fact that past intervention by the militant Victorian branch in the SA CFMEU had proven disastrous.

CFMEU secretary John Setka and his wife Emma addressed the media during a press conference this week. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

The Victorian branch sent organisers to Adelaide over six weeks in 2013-2014 in an industrial campaign that cost the SA branch millions in fines for breaches of workplace laws and resulted in union organisers being stripped of right-of-entry permits.

This story is one of many involving Setka where he has used menace, stand-over tactics and vile abuse to consolidate his power and advance his radical agenda.

This is the man who described former prime minister Kevin Rudd as a “maggot” and a “f***ing dog” for refusing to scrap the building industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

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He vowed to obtain and reveal the home addresses of every inspector working for the ABCC, telling a union rally: “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.”

Last year, Setka posed his own young children in a photo shared on Twitter (who are aged under 10) holding up a Father’s Day message for ABCC chief Stephen McBurney that simply read: “Go Get F***ed”. (He later deleted the tweet, saying he’d had a “tough year”.)

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has called for John Setka to be removed from the Labor Party. Picture: Colin Murty/The Australian

Setka has been fined or investigated on several occasions in the past over his thuggish conduct at union picket lines, most memorably at the Victorian construction site Grocon where in 2012 he tried to smash his fist through the windscreen of a manager’s vehicle while shouting “I hope you die of cancer.”

It’s quite a back catalogue. I haven’t included it all here, as space is limited. And it makes you wonder why it has taken so long for it to dawn on anyone in the Labor Party that this bloke could be fairly described as a bit of a psycho.

Setka has hit the headlines again, and sparked the ire of Labor’s new federal leadership, over comments he reportedly made about domestic violence victim and campaigner Rosie Batty, which Setka denies.

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For legal reasons, Labor Leader Anthony Albanese has refused to comment on the circumstances in which Setka allegedly made these comments other than to say it is completely separate from a pending plea hearing. It strikes me as a legally pure, but tactically strange decision by Albanese, as the broader context points to a continuing pattern of aggression by Setka that of itself makes him unpalatable to mainstream Australia.

Alleged Rosie Batty comments aside, John Setka is still pleading guilty to charges of harassing and causing injury to a woman. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

In 2017, Victorian Police charged Setka with the alleged harassment of a woman and allegedly recklessly causing her injury. A plea hearing has been set for later this month. Police have withdrawn many of the charges, with Setka’s lawyers indicating he will plead guilty to two charges of harassment, including by carriage service via texts and phone calls.

These include 45 text messages Setka sent to the woman calling her a “c**t”, “drunken moron” and a “weak f****n piece of s**t”.

Classy stuff. What John Setka did or didn’t say about Batty is by now irrelevant.

We have seen enough of this bloke to get a sense of what he’s like, and it isn’t good.

Remember that time Tony Abbott was doing talkback and a female pensioner rang to say she was so destitute that she’d been forced to get a job on a phone sex line to make ends meet?

Abbott raised a playful eyebrow at the radio host, smirking at the call, and was condemned by the Left of politics for misogyny.

John Setka has been calling people c***s, dogs and maggots for years, and only now is it dawning on them that maybe his services are no longer required.

@penbo