John Setka’s bid to expand CFMEU’s reach to South Australia

Construction union boss John Setka will be the star of the show at the CFMEU’s national conference this week in Adelaide.

CFMEU Victorian secretary John Setka. Picture: David Crosling

Construction union boss John Setka will be the star of the show at the CFMEU’s national conference this week when he heads the Victorian delegation at a five-day gathering in Adelaide that will denounce federal Labor for its treatment of the militant union chief.

The conference will also determine whether Mr Setka will succeed in his desire for a formal Victorian takeover of the South Australian branch, a move the SA government warned would be “a total disaster for an economy that is now on the move”.

The beachside suburb of Glenelg will host about 100 unionists who have booked out scores of rooms and a conference centre at members’ expense at the $200-a-night Stamford Grand Hotel on the Esplanade this week.

The Australian was told the Victorian branch intendeds to use the conference to move a motion condemning federal Labor for purging Mr Setka from its ranks, a move that will inflame tensions within other divisions of the CFMEU that are fed up with Mr Setka’s influence and the controversy he continues to attract.

Those tensions were laid bare in Melbourne last month when it emerged the national branch of the CFMEU, headed by national secretary Michael O’Connor, and the union’s manufacturing division had decided to move out of their shared premises with Mr Setka’s Victorian branch in central Elizabeth Street to a new office in Carlton.

There are fears within sections of the union that Mr Setka plans to use the national conference in Ade­laide to expand his national footprint. The Victorian branch already runs the Tasmanian arm of the CFMEU and Mr Setka has designs on bringing the SA branch under Victorian control, with several Setka loyalists having moved to Adelaide from Melbourne in the past two years.

The SA Liberal government said it was watching the situation closely and did not want Mr Setka’s brand of Victorian militancy to make its way over the border. “The last thing we need in SA is the likes of Setka and his mob playing games,” State Industry and Skills Minister David Pisoni told The Australian yesterday.

“It is a dangerous situation for the more co-operative relationship that has existed in SA between the building industry and the unions. At a time when we are seeing new investment and cranes in the sky, the last thing we want to see is their militant agenda being forced on our peaceful worksites.”

A power vacuum has emerged within the SA CFMEU branch, with state secretary Andy Sutherland reportedly keen to return to Queensland. Mr Sutherland was brought in to run the branch at the behest of the national office after the white-anting of the more moderate former state secretary Aaron Cartledge, who spoke exclusively to The Australian two months ago about his ousting.

Mr Cartledge was forced aside after Mr Setka wrote an email to the CFMEU’s entire national leadership in 2017, describing the SA branch as “a useless bunch of weak c..ts” who deserved “a good f..king” for letting construction workers remain on the job over the summer holidays.

Several Victorians have become involved in the SA branch, including new Adelaide CBD organiser Taivairanga Savage, whose Facebook page includes pictures of him with Mr Setka.

The SA branch union has paid a price for its recent militancy. A ­series of unlawful constructi­on site entries led to an ­explosion in prosecutions, with 20 separate court cases against the SA branch since 2014 for breaches of right-of-entry laws, resulting in several million dollars in fines. This compared with just two court cases in the previous six years. The branch spent $413,194 on legal costs last year, up from $19,634 in 2017.

A national CFMEU spokesman told The Australian that the union would not comment on its internal operations.