Days numbered for Australia’s most destructive union

CFMEU general president Tony Maher.

It has been a lengthy and secret negotiation between once unlikely allies, Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter and veteran union leader, Tony Maher — and the trigger is now set for the political detonation of Australia’s most destructive union, the CFMEU.

Porter and Maher have been brought together by the reckless behaviour of their common enemy, John Setka, with his Victorian powerbase in the construction wing of the amalgamated union. But that amalgamated union is about to be busted.

Next week Porter will introduce into parliament a bill to surgically allow the break-up of the CFMEU, empowering Maher to detach the mining and energy division into a separate union and Michael O’Connor to follow with the manufacturing division separation.

The bill is the result of a careful collaboration between Porter and Maher. It will shake union politics, inflame the conflict within the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union and constitutes a strategic rethink by the Morrison government on how to weaken Setka, the nation’s most militant union leader.

Porter told this paper his demerger bill will empower the destiny of the “decent, hardworking parts of an amalgamated union” dissatisfied with their fate.

Just a year ago Porter’s Ensuring Integrity Bill, narrowly defeated in the Senate, aimed at penalties and deregistration to combat the CFMEU but now he has a new strategy — joining with Setka’s union opponents to achieve the break-up of the amalgamated entity.