CFMEU a glimpse to a Shorten-led future: Scott Morrison

The future of Australia ruled by a Shorten government would resemble the CFMEU under John Setka, Scott Morrison says.

CFMEU Victorian leader John Setka. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

The future of Australia under a Bill Shorten-led government would resemble the CFMEU under John Setka, Scott Morrison says.

Defending his vow to consider deregistering the militant union after Mr Setka issued a since deleted tweet featuring a photograph of his young son and daughter holding a sign telling the Australian Building and Construction Commission to “GO GET FU#KED”, Mr Morrison accused the Labor leader of being unable to stand up to Mr Setka.

“Bill Shorten, as I said yesterday, he’s union-bred, union-fed and union-led,” the Prime Minister said.

“He’s completely owned by militant unions in this country, and that’s how he proposed to run the country.

“He said he was going run the country like a union, so have a look at John Setka’s union, and you can see the future of Australia under a Bill Shorten-led government.”

Mr Morrison said Mr Shorten thought he was “already across the line” in terms of winning the next election.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Stewart McLean

“He’s taking the Australian people and the next election for granted,” he said.

“I can tell you what, I’m not, and I am going to work day and night with my whole team, because I want to see an even stronger Australia, where we keep our economy strong, where we keep Australians safe, and we keep all Australians together.”

Mr Morrison said he was taking advice and working closely with Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O’Dwyer on the possible deregistration of the CFMEU.

“I noticed Bill Shorten yesterday said this was only about a tweet,” he said.

“I mean, if that was his condemnation of what John Setka said yesterday, he took to him with a feather, an absolute feather.

“This guy, Bill Shorten can’t stand up to John Setka. He’s owned by John Setka. I’m not owned by John Setka or anybody.

“My government focuses on the needs and passions of Australians and putting them first.

“Bill Shorten puts militant unions first, and he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to give him a slight tap with a wet newspaper.”

Mr Morrison said there were great people in the union movement.

“I commend them for the selfless work that they do. This is not about them. This is about thugs that run unions and run Bill Shorten,” he said.

“And Australians, that’s why they’re not sure about this bloke. They’re not sure about him, because he can’t be fair dinkum with them about the relationship that he has with John Setka.

“I mean, they’re too close. They’re just too close. And people in Australia know that.

“The government’s talking about the CFMEU because they’ve got nothing else”

Mr Shorten said he had no time for any illegality, whether it happened in a union or in a big bank.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: AAP

“But I don’t therefore think you make unions illegal in this country, if you have individuals within them not adhering to the rules,” he said.

“If it wasn’t for the unions, we wouldn’t have public holidays and penalty rates. If it wasn’t for the unions we wouldn’t have a strong minimum wage.

“I am capable of distinguishing individual acts of illegality from the whole, you know, the whole institution.

“But let’s face it, the government’s talking about the CFMEU and unions because they’ve run out of anything to talk about with everyday Australians.

Mr Shorten said he would be more willing to listen to the Prime Minister’s “union bashing” if he was talking about the health of Australians and hadn’t voted to cut penalty rates.

“Under this Prime Minister, who no-one voted for, they’ve cut schools, they’ve cut hospitals, they’ve cut penalty rates,” Mr Shorten said.

PM lays down law to CFMEU

The Coalition will seek to revive controversial plans to disqualify law-breaking union officials after Mr Morrison moved to make ­industrial relations an election battleground by threatening to deregister the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and ­Energy Union.

Asked whether he would consider deregistering the CFMEU, the Prime Minister said yesterday: “Well of course I would.”

Signalling a more aggressive approach to workplace relations than Malcolm Turnbull took, Ms O’Dwyer said the ­government would consider “all options available to it to deal with the CFMEU”, including pursuing passage of proposed union governance laws stalled in the Senate.

Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said Mr Morrison’s call was “like saying we should ban banks because we continue to see bad behaviour from the banking sector.”

“When people do the wrong thing in the union movement they should face criticism … or they should face the full force of the law, and I’m sure those fines are very effective in making people think twice,” Ms Plibersek told ABC radio.

Asked about the recidivist actions of the CFMEU, where officials have publicly said that they regard fines for breaking the law as a “cost of doing business”, Ms Plibersek reiterated that any organisation should face legal consequences for bad behaviour.

“I can’t help but notice that Scott Morrison’s very quick to jump on this, but he voted 26 times against a banking royal commission,” she said.

“Any organisation has people who do the wrong thing. Those individual people need to be sanctioned, and if there is evidence of problems organisationally, then they should face the full force of the law.”

The Prime Minister and Ms O’Dwyer yesterday sought to embarrass Bill Shorten over Mr Setka’s use of his children in a social media post to attack the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

“The CFMEU have behaved under John Setka like a bunch of thugs and to involve his children in that, I think, is one of the ugliest things I’ve seen,” Mr Morrison said on 2GB radio. “I mean, this stuff just makes your skin crawl.’’

Mr Setka yesterday deleted the post, which the Opposition Leader and the national ­secretary of the CFMEU’s construction division, Dave Noonan, labelled inappropriate.

GRAPHIC: The ugly attack

National employer groups stopped short of supporting deregistration of the CFMEU, urging the government instead to get the Senate crossbench to support the Coalition’s Ensuring Integrity Bill. The bill lowers the threshold for the courts to deregister a union and permits the courts to disqualify union officials if they commit two civil law breaches.

Ms O’Dwyer said the government, as a “first step’’, called on the ALP to support the bill. “The bill will ensure that unions are run by ‘fit and proper’ people, can be deregistered or placed under ­administration when, for example, there is widespread lawlessness, and can only merge when this is in the public interest,’’ she said.

Ms O’Dwyer said Mr Setka’s “use of his own children in an ­obscene image to target the hardworking officials of the Australian Building and Construction Commission is beyond the pale”.

Mr Morrison described Mr Shorten as “union-bred, union-fed and union-led” but the Opposition Leader said Mr Morrison had leapt on Mr Setka’s tweet “like a drowning man will grab at a fig leaf”.

Mr Shorten, who in 2016 wrote that “as Labor leader, I still think like an organiser”, said he did not condone the inappropriate tweet but “in all seriousness, I would like to see Prime Minister Morrison more worried about energy prices than he is about tweets from union officials”. In a tweeted retraction yesterday, Mr Setka wrote: “Mea Culpa. Was emotional on Father’s Day after tough year on family. Shouldn’t have included kids. Now deleted.”

In 2015, Mr Setka was arrested in front of his children on charges of blackmail. The Victorian ­Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the charges this year.

The CFMEU is a powerful political campaigner for Labor, boasting assets of $310 million and $146m in annual revenues. Courts have imposed almost $16m in fines on its members, with a federal judge blasting the union last month for its “disgraceful and shameful” history of law-breaking.

Master Builders Australia chief executive Denita Wawn said the discussion about deregistering the CFMEU should be a wake-up call to the parliament to pass the ­Ensuring Integrity Bill.

“Our question, particularly to the crossbench, is when is enough enough?” Ms Wawn said. “Small family business people and tradies are bullied and threatened by the union every single day.

“The ABCC does a great job holding the union to account for its unlawful behaviour but the CFMEU construction division refuses to obey the law like everyone else even when its law-breaking is condemned again and again by the courts and it’s fined millions of dollars that are paid with its members’ money.”

Without the support of Labor or the Greens, the government needs to win the votes of eight out of the 10 Senate crossbenchers to legislate its policies.

Senator Rex Patrick, a member of the Centre Alliance party, which holds two crossbench votes, said the party could support the bill but wanted “equity” between the way unions and the corporate sector were treated. “To the extent that there is commonality between the union and the corporate sector, there must be equity in the scope of any provisions dealing with the conduct of officials/directors and with the sanctions for breaching them,” Senator Patrick said.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm said he was open to supporting the bill after negotiations with former workplace minister Craig Laundy in March. It is understood he and Mr Laundy agreed on two amendments to the bill, including to toughen the public-interest test.

United Australia Party senator Brian Burston said he had initially supported the bill and would ­re-examine the proposals before making a final decision.

South Australian independent senator Tim Storer said Mr Setka’s tweet “would have been offensive as well as counter-productive to his cause at any time, to have done so on Father’s Day was doubly inappropriate”.

Senator Storer’s spokesman said he had listened to all sides and was examining whether it was ­appropriate to classify corporations and unions in the same category. “Companies, for example, are supposed to act in the interests of their shareholders; unions are voluntary associations established to act in the interests of their members,” his spokesman said.

“Senator Storer has been interested to note, for example, in ­evidence presented to the banking royal commission that APRA failed to prosecute Colonial First State for 15,000 acknowledged breaches of the law, compared with the rigour with which some unions have been pursued.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the Ensuring Integrity Bill should be passed as a first step without delay. “The CFMEU’s repeated law-breaking is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue, as a long line of respected judges have pointed out in the strongest possible terms,’’ he said.