CFMEU’s John Setka: ‘You can’t do this to us, to the union’

CFMEU boss John Setka vows to go after those who sought his downfall.

CFMEU Victoria official John Setka in Melbourne. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

A day after his spectacular court victory over the federal Coalition, John Setka is on the fifth floor of the John Cummins Building, the CFMEU’s new $30 million Victorian headquarters named after his mentor, insisting he doesn’t real­ly know Bill Shorten.

Setka, the barrel-chested, tattooed, 193cm former builders ­labourer with a propensity for dropping F-bombs, is the union villain from Coalition central casting. But he shrugs off Liberal Party ­attempts to depict him as “Shorten’s biggest backer”.

Yes, at the suggestion of friends, he did go along to Shorten’s federal election night celebrations but left early, without talking to the Labor leader. He says that when they see each other at functions, they do little more than ­exchange greetings.

“I have never had a beer with Bill Shorten,’’ he tells Inquirer. “I have never had a coffee with Bill Shorten. I don’t really know him. You have to understand that Bill was an enemy of ours. He was in the AWU (the Australian Workers Union). We used to pinch all their members. We were not bosom buddies.”

Ditto Daniel Andrews. The Victorian Liberals, facing a state election in November, depict Setka as the backroom puppeteer manipulating the Victorian Premier’s agenda.

“People say we’re best mates but I have never met Daniel ­Andrews in my life,’’ Setka says. “All I hear that comes out of the state government is the problem with the CFMEU is they don’t want any seats. I don’t want to be a minister. I don’t want a safe seat. So I don’t have to sell my arse to them. I don’t want to get close to politicians. I have seen so many people get starstruck but I don’t want to be anyone’s master.”

Setka, 53, says he leaves the political wheeling and dealing to his deputy, Shaun Reardon, who, along with his boss, created ­national headlines this week when prosecutors withdrew blackmail charges against them.

Malcolm Turnbull and Mich­aelia Cash hoped Setka would be the biggest scalp from the trade union royal commission. Instead, the collapsed case embarrassed the Coalition and resulted in the union claiming what many critics might have deemed near impossible — the moral high ground.

As Setka talks to Inquirer, and he talks a lot over our 90-minute interview, his mobile phone buzzes regularly, occasionally blurting out the ringtone, a cover version of Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It.

The lyrics reflects his public ­intentions. His legal team, which included Robert Richter QC and prominent lawyer Peter Gordon, is examining legal avenues in a bid to hold to account those Setka claims have been involved in a “conspiracy” to try to bring him and Reardon down.

“We will go after everyone concerned,’’ he says. “We will not rest. We want a bit of justice ­because you just can’t go and do this to us, to the union, to the wider union movement, and just walk away scot-free.”

Setka and Reardon were ­arrested separately on a Sunday in December 2015. Setka claims Sunday was chosen because it was a slow news day and the government wanted maximum impact to gain momentum for its political campaign to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission. That said, the arrests were always going to be big news, not least because an industrial dispute was being treated as a criminal matter, and the pair, if found guilty, faced jail.

On the day of his arrest, Setka was with his wife, lawyer Emma Walters, and their two young children, Johnny, now 4, and Kate, now 6, at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne.

Setka says plainclothes officers followed the family around the busy market for two hours. Later, driving down a nearby side street, Setka’s car was pulled over by two unmarked police vehicles, their lights flashing.

“It was like something out of a movie,’’ Setka recalls. Officers got out of the cars, he says, wearing gun holsters, capsicum spray canisters strapped to their uniforms. He says he could hear his children crying in the car as Walters rang their lawyer. “We want you to come with us and answer questions about blackmail,” the senior officer said, according to Setka. He declined and was arrested.

Setka was released hours later after a “no comment” interview. “They offered to give me a lift home but I’d had enough of police cars by then. My son has separation disorder after the arrest. The kids are scared when they see police officers. We had to sit them down and say the police aren’t bad. It’s had a massive impact on me and Shaun and our families.”

Setka says his elderly parents limited their socialising because they were sick of being quizzed about whether their son would be jailed. Setka’s older son, Daniel, 27, was also affected. And at his daughter’s kindergarten, the teacher told him some parents were complaining about him picking up Kate.

At a White Ribbon function, Setka asked former chief police commissioner Ken Lay why strangers — “squareheads”, as he calls them — were wary of him. “I think it’s the tattoos,’’ Lay said. “Tattoos?’’ Setka replied. “I go to Yarraville for a coffee on a Saturday and the sheilas there have got more tattoos than me. I feel inadequate.”

Behind Setka’s chair there is a photo of his father, Bob Setka, in the chaotic aftermath of the West Gate Bridge collapse in 1970. ­Thirty-five men were killed. He survived, having walked to a different section of the bridge to have a cigarette just before the collapse.

Setka remembers the day in ­detail. Aged six, he was picked up from school by a family friend. He saw helicopters in the sky, a rare sight in western suburban Melbourne at the time. His mother was not home and he turned on the television to watch cartoons but found only news bulletins with reports showing smoke and wreckage from the collapse. The next day he was taken to see his dad in hospital. His father’s head covered in bandages, Setka didn’t recognise him until he spoke. Doctors operated on his back and he walks with a small limp almost a half-century later.

“He went back to work on the bridge when it reopened,’’ Setka says. “That was part of the therapy — they had to go back and face it. But they looked after him. He worked on it all the way until they finished it and opened it up.”

The self-described “boy from Footscray” was recruited as a union organiser by Cummins, the legendary militant, just as the Builders Labourers Federation was being deregistered in the 1980s. Large photos of Cummins hang in the new building and he was an enormous influence on Setka.

He says his father greatly ­admired former BLF general secretary Norm Gallagher and regarded him as a “hero” for the pay rises and conditions he won for workers. Setka feels the same way about Cummins.

Defending his convictions, he says: “A lot of the rap sheet is from punch-ons with the cops on picket lines. We used to cop a ­hiding. We’d be handcuffed, have black eyes, be in the cells and told we ­assaulted them. Cummo used to say, ‘Yeah, we assaulted your fists with our f..king heads.’ I have never killed anyone. My job is to make people go home safe at night.”

Setka accepts he has a “big political target on his head” but claims to be unfazed by Cash’s criticism that regardless of the union’s legal victory, he and his union are law-breakers, having been condemned by many judges and incurred millions of dollars in fines.

“Coming from someone of her calibre, I take it as a compliment,’’ he says. “If she was saying good things about me, I would actually contemplate resigning.’’

Setka is using the platform ­created by the withdrawal of the charges to push Shorten to commit to changes to the federal workplace laws, including the relaxing of restrictions on strike action and the ability of unions to enter workplaces.

He says Labor should commit to removing conditions attached to legal strike action, including protected action ballots of workers and notice periods. Shorten, he says, should also promise unions an unfettered right to enter workplaces to organise members.

“If I am on site and my boss is ripping me off, I am not getting my proper wages and he’s just screwing me, who is the law to tell me, hang on a sec, you just can’t walk off the job, you can’t stop work? I am not working here any more, I am a human being. I am not a slave,’’ he says. “I am working. I am not in the army. I have not been conscripted to work there.”

He says the right of entry laws should be relaxed to allow unions unrestricted access to members at workplaces. “We should be able to go into an area to organise members. This is Australia, not North Korea,’’ he says.

Senior ALP figures say Shorten will not deliver Setka’s agenda. They claim Setka talks a big game but that his influence is overstated.

“We are going through a period of flat wages where the average pay rise across the country is about 2 per cent,’’ one senior party source says. “His union members are getting increases of 5 per cent a year with no trade-offs. They cannot ­legitimately argue they need more bargaining power with outcomes double the rest of the workforce.”

That said, Shorten has already committed to scrapping the Australian Building and Construction Commission and, unlike the Gillard government, will not replace it with a separate body. It means the massive fines that can be imposed on the union and construction workers under the ABCC legislation will be cut by two-thirds.

Claiming Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are “probably the worst Labor prime ministers we have ever f..king seen”, Setka says he ­believes Shorten is seeking to make the Labor Party “how it used be, actually stand up for working people”. He says he expects the union to have “massive blues” with a Shorten government over policy.

“I understand Labor governments have to govern for all Australians. They are not there just to govern for unions but if you can’t restore basic workers’ rights as the Labor Party then change your name. Don’t call yourselves the Labor Party. Be the stand-for-something Labor Party. The legacy the Rudd and Gillard governments left is an absolute disgrace,’’ he says.

“That Labor government was in for five years, what did they achieve for workers? Nothing. They should be ashamed of themselves. Some of the same people who were in charge then now have a chance to redeem themselves.”