‘Abomination’: Former state Labor president Dick Williams blasts Albanese government’s CFMEU laws

Former Queensland Labor president Dick Williams has savaged Anthony Albanese’s government for plunging the CFMEU into administration, lashing the intervention as an ‘abomination’.

Former Queensland ALP President Dick Williams in 2014. Picture: Chris McCormack

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Former Queensland Labor president Dick Williams has savaged Anthony Albanese’s government for plunging the CFMEU into administration, lashing the intervention in the construction union as an “abomination”.

More than 270 union officials were sacked last month, including 21 in Queensland, when the union was forced into administration by federal and state laws following allegations of bikie links and misconduct claims.

Mr Williams has joined the Your Union, Your Choice campaign, led by former CFMEU leaders, to “fight the federal government’s heavy-handed attempts to crush” the union.

“This forced administration is an abomination, and a disgrace to those in the ALP who clearly pay only cheap lip service to trade union or Labor values,” he said in a statement issued by the campaign. “It is a disgrace that it has been allowed to get to this point.”

State secretary of the Electrical Trades Union from 2001 to 2009 and later Queensland ALP president, Mr Williams accused Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt of “betraying” the Labor Party.

“It is a travesty of justice that people have been sacked and defamed with no right of reply and no avenues for redress,” he said.

“The person who introduced this legislation should hang his head in shame for betraying the trust of party members and trade unionists across the country.

“Given the all-embracing choke hold the government has thrown over the CFMEU with its disgraceful legislation, one has to wonder if there is not a far more sinister political game at play here than what’s being said publicly.”

Describing the laws that forced the CFMEU into administration as “brutal and undemocratic”, Mr Williams said allegations against the construction division should have been tested through the courts before an administrator was appointed.

“Even if there is some substance to some of the claims, there are hundreds of elected officials, senior officers and organisers of the CFMEU around the country who have lost their jobs without having a single allegation made against them or their branch,” he said.

CFMEU administrator Mark Irving is launching probes in Queensland and NSW to investigate the involvement of outlaw motorcycle gangs and organised crime groups within the construction industry, and alleged kickbacks paid by employers to the union.

In a speech to the National Press Club earlier this month, Mr Watt said the construction sector worked best “when government, employers and workers are all on the same page”.

“We need to fundamentally change the culture of this industry,” he said. “We need a major reset in (our) construction industry, and we have a once-in-a-­generation opportunity to do it.”

The Australian can reveal Mr Williams’s ETU recently resolved to disaffiliate from the Queensland Council of Unions, over its support for the administration laws.

In a letter to QCU general secretary Jacqueline King, Queensland ETU boss Peter Ong lashed the peak union body for not publicly condemning the Albanese government’s laws, which set a “worrying precedent” for future governments.

“When the bill to appoint an administrator to the CFMEU was tabled in parliament, both the ACTU and the QCU had an opportunity to condemn the legislation – but didn’t,” he wrote.