Deregister the militant CFMEU

On Sunday, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke raised the prospect of deregistering the CFMEU, stating “everything is on the table”. For the sake of the economy, he should get on with it. Senior union officials have admitted that as many as 20 CFMEU delegates were members of outlaw motorcycle gangs or had links to bikies. The union faces allegations of thuggery and employing bikies and others with organised crime links on government-funded building sites.

Too little too late, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, on behalf of taxpayers footing the bill for road and rail infrastructure projects, has reported corruption allegations to police and to the state’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.

But as associate editor John Ferguson reports, the long criminal record of John Setka, the former CFMEU Victorian branch secretary who resigned last week, was ignored by Victorian Labor for more than a decade. Mr Setka’s rap sheet shows charges such as assaulting police, assault by kicking, resisting arrest, using threatening words, theft, wilful damage and wilful trespass led to dozens of convictions. Australians, especially Victorians, are paying a high price for Labor’s failure to act. Higher building costs draining the private and public sectors are the result. The inflationary effects have cascaded through the economy like poison, as Eric Johnston writes. Some major projects are unlikely to go ahead because of cost blowouts, with efficient builders refusing to bid for big-ticket construction jobs: “They are too smart to deal with the headaches and likely losses.” Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for building show construction costs have risen by 30 per cent since March 2020, just before the pandemic.

The rot has spread. In Queensland, where the CFMEU is picketing Cross River Rail construction sites, Premier Steven Miles will stop meeting the union and his party will no longer accept its donations until police can confirm bullying, intimidation and bikie links are not occurring. Businesses in the construction sector “have long been forced to work under intimidation and the threat of reprisal if they did not bend to the CFMEU’s will”, as Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox says. In opposition, Albanese Labor foolishly pledged to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The nation needs it.

Anthony Albanese and Mr Burke have voiced frustrations with the CFMEU but that falls far short of what is needed. They should emulate Bob Hawke, a former ACTU president, who crushed the militant Builders Labourers Federation in 1985. Doing so sent a powerful signal about the value of IR reform that encouraged productivity gains to fund better pay and conditions.