Andrew Bolt: John Setka the true moron of construction worker protests

Fear of the vaccine among construction workers has been made worse by the CFMEU’s menacing culture of up-yours, anti-Establishment rage. For once, John Setka was on the wrong end of it.

John Setka called the protesters “morons”. But the real morons are Labor leaders and union bosses like Setka who incited these massive protests in Melbourne.

They’ve brought civil disorder to Melbourne through their bullying, threats and lies.

Let me be very clear: I am against political violence. I am against attacking police. I am all for vaccines.

But you can push people only so far. And Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has forgotten that true leadership demands more than setting draconian rules and sending an army of police to enforce them.

Melburnians have been locked down for a total of seven months already. You cannot cause that much pain for so long without people getting desperate, but on Saturday we saw what happens to Melburnians who try to protest, even in the open air where the chance of infection is nearly zero.

One elderly woman was even knocked down and sprayed in the face by two police.

Police didn’t try that again on Monday, when construction workers protested outside the office of their CFMEU union, whose leaders they accuse of not doing enough to protect them from a new government order to get vaccinated or lose their jobs.

The CFMEU culture is menacing and this time Setka was on the wrong end of it. Picture: David Crosling

Yes, I know, that fear of the vaccine is pretty irrational.

But it’s been a real problem among construction workers, made worse by the infamous CFMEU culture of conspiracy-mongering and up-yours anti-government rage.

The CFMEU culture is also menacing, and this time Setka was on the wrong end of it, having to hide inside his office when the protest against him got violent.

What happened next was monumentally stupid, and shows how bankrupt Victoria’s political culture has become.

It’s as if the Premier and our union bosses were determined to enrage these protesters and then set them loose.

First, Setka and the ACTU leadership pretended that most of Monday’s protesters weren’t actually union members.

Setka claimed they were anti-vaxxer extremists who’d hijacked the protest – “drunken, fascist, anti-Australian morons” and neo-Nazi “professional protesters”.

ACTU Sally McManus agreed the anti-Setka protest was actually “orchestrated by violent Right-wing extremists and anti-vaccination activists”, and former Labor leader Bill Shorten, a Setka ally, abused the protesters as “hard-Right, man-baby Nazis”.

In fact, footage of the protesters showed many wore CFMEU jackets and logos, or the high-vis vests of highly unionised construction firms.

Fear of the vaccine among construction workers has been made worse by the infamous CFMEU culture of conspiracy-mongering. Picture: David Crosling

And Setka later gave the game away by threatening to get the protesters sacked, raging: “There will be consequences. They won’t be working in the construction industry”.

Yet much of the media ran with the lie instead, even after the Premier on Monday night confirmed the truth – with a blunder.

At 10pm, Andrews decided to close the construction industry because many workers had indeed refused his order to get vaccinated and infection rates were high.

So on Tuesday, thousands of construction workers – angry at being smeared and lied about, and now without a job to go to – turned up at the CFMEU headquarters to protest again.

For hours they marched around Melbourne.

Once again, much of the media vilified them, accusing them of mass drunkenness, anarchy, criminality, chaos and thuggery.

It’s true that traffic was blocked. It is true that a reporter was hit in the head with a flying bottle and put in a headlock. It is true that police cars were attacked, and police pelted.

All of that was ugly. But I did not see the kind of damage and violence of some other protests by the Left.

After all the chaos, Daniel Andrews just went in harder. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Once again journalists assured us many of the protesters were “fake tradies” – professional agitators and extremists – without bothering to prove it.

But police chief Shane Patton later admitted: “I am not clear on whether we had Right-wing extremists in the crowd”.

That’s after arresting more than 60 protesters.

So what did Premier Andrews learn from all this chaos?

To just go in harder.

To insist on mandatory vaccines, to denounce Tuesday’s protest as “ugly, unlawful”, and to say such protests “will not be tolerated”.

How blockheaded. Protests in the open air aren’t just safe – or safe enough – but an important safety valve for people under huge pressure. Why are they banned?

Why did police on Wednesday again physically confront a couple of thousand protesters at the Shrine who had been peaceful for hours, instead of letting them just have their say?

Yes, I have little sympathy for anti-vaxxers, too, but what’s Andrews’ end game: to not just to sack the vaccine-hesitant and ban them from protesting, but to send in the tanks if they don’t stop?