Maritime Union of Australia admits to contempt of court

The Maritime Union of Australia has admitted to breaching Supreme Court orders that created an exclusion zone around Melbourne’s Webb Dock.

MUA members arrive as Union members join together with the MUA to protest outside Victoria International Container Terminal in Melbourne in December last year. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

The Maritime Union of Australia has admitted to contempt of court after breaching Supreme Court orders that created a 100m exclusion zone around Melbourne’s Webb Dock during December’s blockade.

The December blockade at the Victorian International Container Terminal left more than 1000 containers stranded for more than two weeks and led to a Supreme Court injunction against the MUA.

Barrister Stuart Wood QC, for VICT, told Victoria’s Supreme Court the union exhibited “deliberate defiance” in breaching the court orders two days after they were issued and the conduct was sufficiently serious to be regarded as criminal contempt.

“This is a deliberate defiance of the court’s orders, a way of achieving its industrial objectives in preference to and overruling, in effect, a court’s order not to do it by this means,” he said.

Mr Wood played a video of then national MUA president Chris Cain, deputy national secretary Will Tracey and Victorian branch secretary Joe Italia in the court ordered exclusion zone walking towards the picket line.

Mr Wood said Mr Tracey told the protesters that the union had “taken this dispute on”.

“It’s important as a method of escalating this that the officials, both at the branch and the national level come down today and defy the … injunctions,” Mr Tracey reportedly said.

“We will see how the company escalates this and whether they get us in court for contempt and when that occurs come what may we’ll address it then.”

The MUA amalgamated with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union earlier this year and Mr Wood argued Justice Michael McDonald should have regard to the previous contempt of court and similar behaviour by the CFMEU when he fixed the penalty against the amalgamated union.

“The MUA knew when it applied to join the CFMMEU that it was joining an organisation that had some strengths and some weaknesses,” he said.

“One of its strengths, as set out in [an] affidavit, is its membership and financial strength. One of its weaknesses is that it’s got a bad record.”

Mr Wood told the court the union had not displayed contrition nor co-operation including seeking a stay of the contempt proceeding in August on the basis of abuse of process.

Mr Wood told the court VICT was seeking costs in the order of $500,000-$600,000 to be paid on an indemnity basis of about 70 per cent.

Herman Borenstein QC, for the union, claimed there would be a large difference between the sought costs and where the probable penalty lay.

“We say in our written submissions that the issue of specific deterrence is not a great issue at all, because there has been no established pattern of conduct by the MUA, now the division of the — a separate division of the amalgamated body of defying orders of the court,” he said.

“We don’t say to Your Honour that this is a case where no penalty should be imposed, but we do say that no criminal conviction should be entered, and where the penalty should be at the low end of the scale.”