Bill Kelty approves of super-union ‘divorce’ move

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty has backed the right of divisions to walk away from the amalgamated CFMEU.

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty. Picture: Aaron Francis

Laws clearing the way for the break-up of the CFMEU could be passed this week, allowing the union’s mining and energy division to split in months and leaving­ the militant construction division increasingly isolated.

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty has backed the right of divis­ions to walk away from the amalgamated Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energ­y Union.

“There’s nothing wrong with divorce,” he told The Australian on Tuesday. “I think even the Catholic Church accommodates it now.”

The government will introduce the union demerger bill into parliament on Wednesday and will seek to have it passed this week after Labor said it would not oppose it.

The bill followed talks between Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter and the union’s mining and energy division secretary, Tony Maher, who will ask his members in March if they want to vote to leave the union.

Mr Maher and the union’s ­former national secretary, Michael­ O’Connor, who remains head of the CFMEU’s manufacturing division, have fallen out with rival construction and maritime division officials.

Mr Kelty described Mr Maher and Mr O’Connor as, in his exper­ience, “two of the country’s best union officials”.

“I am a long time out of the (ACTU secretary’s) job but I don’t see a problem (with unions demerg­ing), provided there are checks and balances and proper processes,” he said.

“If a division wants to divide and their members want to do that, the union leadership wants to do that, and they have thought about it, I can’t see why not.’’

Mr Kelty said the CFMEU was not an amalgamation of integ­ration, which was “impossible to separate”, but an amalgamation of divisions.

He said the union was not operating­ in the way envisaged by former building union leader Tom McDonald. “It’s not that democratic model that Tom creat­ed,” he said.

Electrical Trades Union nat­ion­al secretary Allen Hicks, an ally of the construction division, called for the bill to be resisted by the Senate crossbench.

“This legislation could lead to all manner of unintended consequences,’’ he said. “Labor and the crossbench are kidding themselves if they think Christian Porter and the Liberal Party have the best interests of working people in mind. This hastily drafted plan designed­ to target the CFMEU will hit the entire movement.

“Trade unions work best when they are guided by robust debate and democratic process. Under this approach, a disgruntled division will take their bat and ball and head for the pavilions at the first sign of disagreement.”

He said union power would fragment if the bill became law and the ETU wanted Anthony Albanese­ “to oppose these laws in their entirety and condemn them for what they are”. Labor’s caucus has backed the draft legislation, with no oppos­ition from any MPs on Tuesday.

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke said he suspected changes would be made, telling the ABC, “at the moment there’s only a three-year window where a division of an amalgamated union can vote that it wants to leave again. We’re open to there being some exceptional circumstances beyond that … where members … might want to exercise that democratic right.”