Analysis: Michael Ravbar achieves his real aim in Jackie Trad demonstration

The CFMEU’s demonstration outside State Parliament for Jackie Trad to be sacked was ultimately nothing more than a bit of rabble-rousing. But union boss Michael Ravbar achieved his real aim, writes Steven Wardill.

MICHAEL Ravbar has always had a penchant for the provocative.

The construction union boss demonstrated this again yesterday when he and hundreds of CFMEU members turned up to State Parliament and chanted for beleaguered Deputy Premier Jackie Trad to be sacked.

It was sound and fury, for sure.

But what did it signify? Not much.

Ravbar and Trad are hardly firm friends. If anything, they are enemies.

They’re both powerful figures from within Labor’s dominant Left faction but neither relies on the other for influence.

Michael Ravbar at Thursday’s CFMEU protest at State Parliament. Pic: Annette Dew

If yesterday’s rally included other Left faction unions, such as the Electrical Trade Union and United Voice members, then it would have signalled the end of Trad’s days as Queensland’s Deputy Premier.

Instead it was a renegade act of a rogue union, like a mad bull bashing at a gate but unable to really harm all the other cattle.

However, Ravbar didn’t storm the gates of State Parliament actually believing his show of force would actually force Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to act against her deputy.

Rather, it was incendiary rabble-rousing ahead of this weekend’s Labor state conference, a chance for the CFMEU to briefly flex its muscle before they all alighted to nearest drinking hole to bend their elbows together.

But Ravbar did achieve his real aim.

He wanted to further inflame the integrity crisis which has engulfed Trad over her errant investment property purchase and add to the extreme public pressure that she is already under.

The CFMEU boss may be considered a bully by some.

But he’s a skilled agent provocateur with few equals.