Labor’s cosy deal with CFMEU

The Victorian CFMEU is getting bang for its buck from a $125,000 donation, with the union’s own lawyer landing a key government board seat.

CFMEU lawyer Peter Russell (centre) campaigning with Ash the Ambo during the 2022 SA election. Source: Facebook

The John Setka-led Victorian CFMEU is getting bang for its buck from its $125,000 donation to South Australian Labor, with the Malinauskas government sacking an anti-CFMEU member from a key government board and installing the union’s own lawyer to the taxpayer-funded role.

SA CFMEU in-house solicitor Peter Russell will receive $15,000 from SA taxpayers after his appointment to the Construction Industry Training Board last month.

Aside from his legal duties, Mr Russell is also a high-profile activist with an edgy social media profile, posing up on Facebook at several protests and wearing face masks bearing slogans such as “F..k the Tories” and “At Least Thatcher is Still Dead”.

Under CFMEU rules, any office holder appointed to a government board position must hand the money back to the union, meaning the public money for Mr Russell’s role goes straight into CFMEU coffers.

CFMEU lawyer Peter Russell. Source: Facebook

Given the union’s generosity towards Labor, as shown by its $125,000 donation to SA Labor just three days before Peter Malinauskas’s March 19 election win, the public money could also end up being donated back to the ALP.

The Malinauskas government has further appeased the CFMEU by removing its former state secretary Aaron Cartledge from the CITB board, the man who blew the whistle on the Victorian branch’s strongarm tactics over the historically moderate SA division.

Mr Cartledge now works as a building industry consultant, a role which saw him labelled a “dog”, “maggot” and “c..t” by several CFMEU office-bearers in a ­social media attack last year.

Mr Cartledge drew the ire of Mr Setka, who labelled the SA branch “weak c...ts” who deserved “a good f..king” in 2016 after he discovered SA construction workers were working during December when he believed they should have all been on holidays.

The other person removed from the board to enable the promotion of Peter Russell is senior Adelaide accountant Nick Handley. Ironically, when Mr Handley was appointed to the board by the former Liberal government in 2019, Labor attacked his appointment because he was a Liberal Party fundraiser, saying it was inappropriate for anyone from an organisation that had donated to a political party to hold such a role.

“Was Mr Handley chosen for the job based on merit or as a ­reward for Liberal Party fundraising?” Opposition skills spokeswoman Clare Scriven asked at the time, while also demanding the State Ombudsman investigate his appointment.

Now in power, the Malinauskas government is defending Mr Russell’s appointment to the board, with Training Minister Blair Boyer hailing him as “a candidate of merit with more than 10 years’ experience representing workers in the construction industry”.

“Peter Russell brings extensive legal experience in the construction industry to the CITB including in his roles as a solicitor, industrial officer, workers compensation officer and a deputy delegate of a Mining and Quarrying Occupational Health and Safety Committee,” Mr Boyer told The Weekend Australian.

“Peter is also a Member of the Law Society of South Australia and has been admitted to the High Court of Australia’s Roll of Practitioners and the South Australian Roll of Practitioners as a barrister and solicitor.

“His appointment follows considerable board and director level experience, including joining the SA Portable Long Service Leave Board in February 2021 and becoming a director of the South Australian Building Industry Redundancy Scheme Trust in 2020.”

Mr Boyer was also asked by The Weekend Australian if Mr Russell’s appointment was appropriate given the CFMEU’s $125,000 donation to SA Labor, but he didn’t answer the question.

While federal Labor has moved to distance itself from the Victorian CFMEU, with Anthony Albanese demanding Mr Setka’s expulsion from the ALP over his 2019 comments about domestic ­violence campaigner Rosie Batty, Mr Setka’s division enjoys growing industrial and political clout in SA. After years of white-anting the SA branch, Mr Setka is being installed as the SA branch secretary, in addition to being state secretary in Victoria and Tasmania.

The Weekend Australian revealed last week that the Victorian branch made a direct $125,000 donation to SA Labor in the final week of the campaign, and just weeks after then opposition leader Mr Malinauskas had promised that, if elected, he would ban union and business donations to political parties.

SA Labor’s attempts to claim distance from the CFMEU are further undermined by the fact that Mr Russell also appears on Facebook posing alongside the female ambulance officer known as “Ash the Ambo” while campaigning for the ALP. Ash the Ambo played a pivotal role for Labor in its defeat of the one-term Marshall government, starring in advertisements targeting hospital ramping urging voters to “Vote like your life depends on it”.

In the final week of the campaign, key claims in those advertisements were ruled to be misleading by the SA Electoral Commission, but SA Labor kept running them anyway in a move former treasurer Rob Lucas called a “despicable” attempt to “steal” the election.

The reasons behind the Victorian CFMEU’s takeover of the SA branch where made more apparent this week with the SA division’s financial audit showing a $450,000 loss for 2020-21.

The financial collapse has been fuelled by an explosion in fines for industrial law breaches as the SA branch has become more militant. Some of the breaches involve very senior office bearers including Andy Sutherland, who was installed by the Victorians as SA state secretary after Mr Cartledge was forced aside.

A court heard this month that Mr Sutherland had broken industrial laws on five occasions, the latest being an illegal picket against the builders of an Adelaide apartment complex over a pay dispute.

Former SA CFMEU state secretary Andy Sutherland. Source: Facebook

During that picket, CFMEU members harassed a female lawyer working for the building company, shouting “grubby-grub-grub”, “pay your bills” and “sell your Porsche”, and also prevented subcontractors from delivering materials to the worksite.

The court found the union’s conduct was “serious, deliberate and unjustified”. “This offending is both another example and a continuation of the union’s appalling behaviour,” Justice Patrick O’Sullivan wrote. “This is the fifth time Mr Sutherland has engaged in behaviour which contravenes industrial legislation.”

Justice O’Sullivan set a penalty of $189,000 for the union and $38,000 for Mr Sutherland.

In 2019, Mr Sutherland was also fined $3500 by the Federal Court over an incident on a Brisbane worksite, where he parked a car behind a crane to prevent it from operating. That penalty was part of $58,000 in fines paid by the union over industrial law breaches at the Legacy Way Port Connect Project, with Justice John Reeves saying: “The CFMEU is an identified recidivist and it has, by its conduct, demonstrated a continuing defiance of the law.”

Another senior office bearer, state organiser Desmond Savage, was one of six CFMEU officials penalised $428,250 last year for unlawful conduct during the $165m Adelaide Airport redevelopment, the highest penalty ­imposed against the union in SA.

SA CFMEU organiser Desmond Taivairanga Savage. Source: Facebook

Mr Savage and a second official, Te Aranui Albert, were found to have repeatedly verbally abused a construction company worker.

The Federal Court found one or both said “f..k you I’m not dealing with you”, “you’re a f..king waste of space”, “he’s a piece of shit”, “you’re a f..king idiot”, “you don’t know what you are f..king doing”, and “go do your f..king colouring-in books you c..t”.

The court said while a degree of coarse language occurred on construction sites, the “language used by Mr Savage and Mr ­Albert, and the sentiments they conveyed, went well beyond coarseness”.

The Weekend Australian has a standing invitation to Mr Setka for an interview, which he has not accepted, but he spoke this week on ABC Radio in Adelaide. Asked if South Australians had anything to fear from his new role as SA secretary, Mr Setka replied: “No they certainly don’t. We are actually not taking over. We are assisting.”

Asked about his militant reputation, he said: “A lot of it has been manufactured over the years. When people tell a story they end up believing it themselves I suppose. They’ve got nothing to fear.”

He also downplayed the fact the Prime Minister had sought his removal from the ALP.

“In my job you do make a lot of enemies along the way. Sometimes politicians don’t like being told the truth. In my job I am here to represent my members.”

Mr Malinauskas returns from two week’s leave on Monday and so far has made no comment on the CFMEU/SA Labor revelations of the past fortnight.