Steve Price: Victoria has seen worse protests than that of CFMEU construction workers

Claims the tradie protests this week were fuelled by right-wing, anti-vaxxers are wrong. They were just workers, pushed too far, fighting for their freedoms.

Jeff Kennett, the then premier of Victoria, slammed my office door (in the old 3AW building in South Melbourne) behind him and started shouting.

Banging his fist on the desk he demanded I find him an exit from the rear of the building and sent his driver around the back.

Walking him down the stairs and through a narrow corridor to the rear exit door he turned and told me in no uncertain terms he wouldn’t be coming back.

Kennett was at the peak of his power, leading Victoria out of the dark Labor years of John Cain and Joan Kirner, but the revival came at a great cost and not everyone supported his reforms.

One of his favourite weekly appointments was an hour on air on a Thursday from 9am with Neil Mitchell. He used the time to drop policy announcements and test them on the radio talkback audience.

Ten minutes from airtime he would often drop into my office for a chat using the time to test his themes for the day on me. At the time I was 3AW’s program director and presenting their Drivetime program from 4pm.

Former premier Jeff Kennett is no stranger to CFMEU protests. Picture: Ian Currie

Kennett’s anger on this Thursday began with an incident out the front of the old Bank St building, where for several weeks the building union — the CFMEU — had decided it could stage a weekly anti-Kennett protest.

The numbers were modest but the voices chanting anti-Kennett slogans were so loud you could hear them on air. So organised had this weekly gathering become that the unionists had started to bring along a barbecue.

Sausage sandwiches were handed out and in the prior weeks it had resembled a Bunnings Saturday morning fundraiser.

That all changed on this Thursday.

Kennett had his weekly entry timed to a tee. His white premier’s limo would pull up about 8.45am, the TV cameramen would roll cameras and Jeff would stride through a shouting union mob with a big smile on his face.

The images would run on the TV news that night and those that loved Jeff thought, “good on you”, and those that despised him thought, “what an arrogant prick”.

As Kennett charged through the union mob that day, one of the unionists lunged at the premier with a barbecue fork and it rattled him – as it would anyone.

It was a moment in time and not the worst threat made to Kennett, but he’d had enough and let me know about it. As a radio station, we didn’t want to lose his weekly input, so we installed an audio link in his office.

Kennett, Victorian premier from 1992 to 1999, would, on retirement, reflect on violent protests aimed at him over school closures, local council amalgamations, public service job cuts and, famously, his determination to stage the Formula 1 Grand Prix.

He even claimed, at one point, to have been shot at, with a bullet whistling past his ear.

Who knows whether that really happened, but reflecting this week on a series of Covid protests through a largely deserted Melbourne makes you reflect on the recent history of Victorian protests.

Melbourne is clearly Australia’s protest capital. From anti-Vietnam War marches to calls for the sacking of John Kerr to saving the Franklin Dam, we have seen them all.

Violence on the streets of Melbourne is certainly not new and while Saturday through Richmond and the week’s West Gate Freeway march and Shrine of Remembrance stand-off were worrying, we have seen much worse.

While tradies taking over the West Gate was worrying, Melbourne has had far worse protests in the past. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

In 2000, when Melbourne staged the World Economic Forum, an anarchist group dubbed S11 went feral, and police responded with baton charges and the use of police horses.

This was before heavily-armoured riot squads were formed and there was certainly no pepper spray and pepper guns to round up protesters.

Police reportedly removed their ID badges and it was an ugly confrontation with protesters throwing marbles under the feet of police horses, some of which went to ground.

Protesters were chained together, and they rushed the conference centre attempting to smash their way in.

That protest back then more resembled what happened last Saturday in Richmond and the earlier confrontation over lockdowns in the city weeks earlier.

But construction workers agitating this week about their industry being shut down and their union deserting them over mandatory vaccinations was a different type of protest.

Assembling numbers to target what they felt was a cave-in by union boss John Setka was a protest about the loss of work and freedoms.

The idea peddled by Setka and the Andrews government that all these people were some fringe, right-wing anti-vaxxer crowd was simply not correct.

For former Labor leader Bill Shorten – a former boss of the AWU – to label these workers Nazis was ridiculous. As a former union leader who would have been involved in many protests in his former career it was an unfortunate rush of blood.

He actually doubled down on his description in a radio interview with me on Thursday and maintains the protesters were largely not tradies.

Unlike protests from the past — those born out of political passion, anti-war sentiment or anarchist hatred of the establishment — the CFMEU protests were about job security and personal freedoms.

The CFMEU protests were more about job security and personal freedoms. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

Victoria Police did an outstanding job. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

No one condones violence of any sort, and Victoria Police did an outstanding job in the circumstances. The Shrine hijacking was disgraceful and the public mood shifted.

But these are not normal days. Victorians have been in lockdown for more 233 days over eighteen months and eventually something had to give.

No one could have predicted it would be tearooms and vaccination for work threats that would be the final straw — but it was.

Until Victorians get the freedom that they so desperately crave, this will continue and the Premier would be wise to ease the pressure more quickly.

As a footnote our Shrine of Remembrance should NEVER be used for a protest of ANY kind.

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• Four older people sitting at a picnic table by the beach sipping wine and having a laugh

• Restaurant quality takeaway complete with a few Negroni cocktails

• The NRL’s decision to play the Melbourne Storm Preliminary final BEFORE the AFL grand final

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DISLIKES

• The local vaccination centre in Rosebud closing its doors for the grand final public holiday we shouldn’t even be having

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• The state government’s refusal to allow the MCG to be used for a vaccination blitz on grand final weekend

• Golf returns but only in pairs and 15km from home, even if fully vaccinated

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