Election donation ties SA Labor to CFMEU
South Australian Labor’s claims to have severed ties with the John Setka-led Victorian CFMEU have been torpedoed by revelations of a $125,000 donation.
Labor’s claims to have severed ties with the John Setka-led Victorian CFMEU have been torpedoed by revelations that the union’s militant Victorian branch made a direct donation of $125,000 to South Australian Labor before its victory in March.
The donation was accepted on March 16, just three days before Peter Malinauskas was elected Premier in the landslide defeat of Steven Marshall’s one-term Liberal government.
The existence of the payment has emerged as the Victorian CFMEU increases its national footprint by taking formal control of the SA branch, where Mr Setka is being installed as state secretary after years of white-anting the more moderate SA division.
The donation suggests hypocrisy on the part of SA Labor, given that Labor figures voiced concern during the state campaign about the tastelessness of election posters distributed around Adelaide by the CFMEU. One poster depicted Mr Marshall with a photoshopped image of his face on a rat’s body, under the words “Marshall doesn’t give a rat’s”.
Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon, who ran against Mr Marshall in the Adelaide seat of Dunstan, described the posters as “reprehensible” and asked the CFMEU to remove them. That was in late February, three weeks before Labor accepted the $125,000 donation.
Mr Marshall has remained silent since losing office out of loyalty to the new Liberal leadership, but suspended his self-imposed rule on Friday, given the personal nature of the CFMEU campaign against him and the union’s now-documented links to SA Labor.
“This inextricably links John Setka’s Victorian branch of the CFMEU to the campaign run by SA Labor and Peter Malinauskas,” Mr Marshall said.
The emergence of the donation is made more awkward for SA Labor by the fact that, in January, Mr Malinauskas gave a much-hyped address to the Don Dunstan Foundation where he promised that if elected he would ban donations from unions and business to political parties.
Former state secretary Reggie Martin, now a Labor MLC, confirmed the CFMEU payment but said it was sought “at the local level” in SA through former union state secretary Andy Sutherland.
He said he approached the CFMEU “in the same way we approach all affiliated unions” and that the money had ultimately come from the Victorian branch because it was financially stronger than the SA branch and acted like a parent company.
“I have never met John Setka or spoken to him,” Mr Martin said.
Mr Setka was granted access to the South Australian Parliament earlier this month with two associates. But the state government vehemently denies any of its MPs signed him in or knew he was in town.
“The government was not aware John Setka was in Adelaide or in Parliament House,” a spokesman said.
“No one from the Malinauskas Labor government met with John Setka or even had a request to meet.”
Opposition Treasury spokesman Matt Cowdrey said the government needed to explain how Mr Setka gained access to the Garden Room at Parliament on North Terrace on July 4, saying there were no records of how he had been signed in.
“There are huge concerns about the CFMEU’s infiltration of the South Australian construction industry and its leader John Setka,” Mr Cowdrey said.
“The CFMEU is infamous for grubby tactics and appears to have grown much closer to Peter Malinauskas’ Labor Party since the election in March. We need to know if anyone from the Labor Party admitted John Setka into Parliament House and for what reason were they meeting.”
Anthony Albanese sought to have Mr Setka expelled in 2019 for allegedly denigrating anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty. Mr Setka has strenuously denied those allegations and said the Labor Party had “lost its soul” under the Prime Minister.
Mr Setka has not accepted The Weekend Australian’s invitation for an interview.
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