CFMEU star candidate to get union donations, back workers

CFMEU’s star Labor candidate Mike Brunker has vowed to enter parliament to represent regional workers and miners.

Former coal miner and current Whitsunday regional councillor Mike Brunker, who has been preselected by Labor to run for the regional Queensland seat of Burdekin at the October 31 election. Picture: Jordan Gilliland

The CFMEU’s star Labor candidate — veteran coalminer and local councillor Mike Brunker — has vowed to enter parliament to represent regional workers and miners after the union’s attack on the Palaszczuk Labor government for abandoning its blue-­collar roots.

The construction and mining divisions of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union defected from Labor’s dominant Left faction on Wednesday, accusing the government of pandering to an inner-city elite.

And although construction division boss Michael Ravbar said the union was yanking its financial support, resources and campaigning muscle from Labor ahead of the October 31 election, Mr Brunker might be the exception. The former Bowen mayor is running again in the cane-and-coal electorate of Burdekin, south of Townsville in north Queensland. At the 2017 election, he won 1250 more primary votes than the nearest contender, the LNP’s Dale Last, but was defeated once preferences were distributed.

Mr Last, a former police officer, now holds Burdekin on a margin of less than 1 per cent, and Mr Brunker said he was determined to topple the incumbent to represent working-class people in parliament. “I support all coalmines,” he said. “I supported Adani, I support New Acland.”

“What the (Palaszczuk) government is trying to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s (on the New Acland coalmine proposed expansion) so there can be no other (appeals). It’s extremely distressing that blokes have had to lose their jobs at New Acland.”

In exiting the Left, the CFMEU called for the government to immediately approve the New Acland expansion, a demand rejected by Ms Palaszczuk, who says she is waiting for all legal challenges to be resolved before making a decision.