John Setka not going anywhere, says CFMEU

The CFMEU has upped its attack on Anthony Albanese in the wake of John Setka’s expulsion.

CFMEU’s John Setka.

The CFMEU has ramped up its attac­k on Anthony Albanese over free trade in the wake of John Setka’s expulsion from the Labor Party, accusing the Opposition Leader of “waving through sellout” agreements and the ALP of “sucking up to big corporate interests”.

Construction division leader Dave Noonan declared on Thursday that Mr Setka “won’t be going anywhere” and said delegates at the construction division’s national conference in Adelaide had “100 per cent” supported him ­staying on as Victorian secretary.

“There’s no difficulty (in Mr Setka not being part of the ALP given the union remains affiliated),” Mr Noonan said.

“Many of the top leaders of the union over the years weren’t ALP members. The ALP doesn’t make unions or unionists, it’s unionists that made the ALP.”

National conference delegates passed a motion on Thursday urging­ the ALP to oppose free-trade agreements and “stop sucking­ up to big corporate interests and to the editorial pages of The Australian and the Australian Financial Review”.

“They should come out hard against free-trade agreements that promote the exploitation and wage theft of temporary overseas workers. Are they blind to what’s going on?’’ Mr Noonan said.

Union leaders have accused Labor of abandoning its party platform by siding with the governme­nt last week on the agreements with Indon­esia, Hong Kong and Peru.

Mr Albanese said on Thursday he was pleased Mr Setka was gone from the Labor Party, and defended the ALP’s decision to keep taking donations from the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union.

Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter attacked Labor’s position. “If this guy’s record is too awful, replete with too much law-breaking, that he should be kicked out of the ALP, then why would you ­accept money from a branch of a union that he runs?’’ he said.

Mr Setka has vowed to halt donatio­ns by the union’s Victorian branch, which has given almo­st $1m to Labor since 2012.

Mr Noonan said branches would “make their own decisions about political donations but we haven’t been big donors to the ALP recently”. He said formal decision­s about future donations to the ALP would be made closer to the next election.

Asked about the Labor leader’s criticism of Mr Setka, Mr Noonan said he would rather see Mr Albanes­e “standing up for blue-collar workers through not waving­ through sellout free-trade agreements”.

Mr Noonan also accused Senate­ crossbencher Jacqui Lambie­ of “holding every Aust­ralian worker to ransom” after she insisted she would back a government bill to make it easier to deregister unions and ban union officials unless Mr Setka quit as the Victorian CFMEU leader.

Ahead of the release on Friday of a Senate committee report into the government’s Ensuring Integrity Bill, Senator Lambie maintained her position on Mr Setka.

Mr Porter said the government wanted to bring in laws that “would say that someone who’s behaved like John Setka is not a fit and proper person”.

“But the laws haven’t been sufficient to have him and his career ended as a union official,’’ he said.

Mr Noonan said Senator Lambie­ was on a “personal quest to have some kind of victory over John Setka. It’s entirely unclear as to whether she’s guaranteeing she’d vote against the bill if John wasn’t there,” he said.

Mr Albanese moved to expel Mr Setka from the ALP after he was convicted of harassing his wife and accused of criticising anti-domestic violence advocate Rosie Batty, which Mr Setka ­denied.

“His values aren’t the same as Labor’s values,” Mr Albanese said. “We respect women. John Setka … pleaded guilty to two very serious charges. One of harassment and one of breaching an order to stay away from someone.”