Credlin: Powerful reason for senior Labor people to downplay real nature of CFMEU

It’s impossible to believe that senior figures in the Labor Party and the ACTU were universally ignorant of the thuggish nature of the CFMEU, writes Peta Credlin.

It’s impossible to believe that senior figures in the Labor Party and the ACTU were universally ignorant of the thuggish nature of the construction union, as they have all pretended to be over the past week.

The only difference between the latest press and TV exposes of this crooked union, and court judgments and royal commission reports stretching back four decades, is that, this time, there’s been lurid footage to go with the printed words.

There is, however, a very powerful reason for senior Labor people to downplay or lie about their knowledge of the real nature of this union; namely their dependence on it for funding, personnel, and political support. And a political party dependent on a criminal union is a bit like a business that’s making use of the mafia – it’s effectively tarred with the same brush.

Since last weekend, thanks to media investigations, the whole squalid spectacle has been laid out before the Australian people: Union officials pocketing cash, delivering threats to rivals, attempting to intimidate businesses that have arrangements with the wrong union, explaining to new entrants how kickbacks need to be paid because “everyone has to eat”, and detailing how the Victorian government’s $100bn Big Build is a honey pot for the CFMEU.

A political party dependent on a criminal union is effectively tarred with the same brush. Picture: Richard Walker

The supportive text messages that senior Labor women sent to Victorian CFMEU boss John Setka after he’d been charged with domestic violence and harassing a woman are just one illustration of how ready Labor stooges were to make excuses for some of the figures involved in this rotten union despite their public words about women.

Whether it’s the revelations about the old Builders' Labourers Federation that led the Hawke government to seek its deregistration in 1986, or the Gyles royal commission report in NSW in 1992, or the findings of the federal Cole royal commission in 2003, or the Heydon royal commission in 2015, there are no excuses for ignorance. There are volumes of documented legal evidence against the CFMEU.

Former CFMEU leader John Setka. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

We know from press reports from 2012 that Setka had been charged 60 times and convicted 40 times for a stream of offences such as assaulting police. Peter Dutton for one, has repeatedly asked parliamentary questions about CFMEU criminality in connection with the government’s abolition of the tough cop-on-the-beat, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, so the government’s “we knew nothing” claims are simply self-serving and fraudulent.

Likewise, the government’s claims that it’s, belatedly, taken strong action to crack down on union criminality. It was utterly telling that the Labor Party has merely suspended the affiliation of the CFMEU, not outlawed it. And it has done this in every state except Queensland – which is the one state with an election imminent. It is not returning any of the millions of CFMEU affiliation fees or election donations either.

CFMEU members recently protesting across the road from the entrance to the Cross River Rail site in Roma St Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier-Mail

And sure, an administrator has now been appointed to run the union. But the same enterprise agreements giving extortionate “training” fees to the union, and mandating employer funded union site reps, and insisting upon largely unnecessary extras on the payroll allegedly for safety – all the measures that make building costs at least 30 per cent more expensive than they should be – will remain in place.

I guarantee you, once the media focus has moved on, the same characters who’ve bullied and cheated their way into union office and manipulated Labor governments will be back stronger than ever.

Does anyone think that Anthony Albanese is smart enough and tough enough to deal with a union that even Bob Hawke could not clean up? I think we all know the answer to that one. And it goes a long way to explaining why we have a housing crisis in this country and an infrastructure bill that’s sending states like Victoria broke.

TRUMP’S VP PICK A LESSON FOR AUSTRALIA’S BLUDGERS

I have said for almost two years that there is no way Joe Biden will be on the ballot in November, and while the Democrat Party agonises over how to remove an incumbent US president who’s so obviously no longer up to the job, the Republicans were securing their future by anointing for vice president a credible successor to Donald Trump.

Ohio’s Senator J.D. Vance has one of those “log cabin to White House” backstories that continue to make the United States, in Ronald Reagan’s words, the “last, best hope for mankind”. Vance grew up dirt poor in the hard scrabble Appalachian back country and was largely raised by his grandmother. His father cleared out early and his mother was a drug addict. During his big speech to the Republican National Conference on Thursday, she was there and he revealed that she’s now almost 10 years sober, meaning for much of his life she has been in the grip of abuse.

Republican vice presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/AFP

Just like our own Andrew Hastie MP, Vance joined up because of September 11. Serving in the marines, he went to Iraq, and then topped his law school class at Yale. I first knew his name in 2016 when I read his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy that was part memoir, part-social reflection, and I urge you to read it if you haven’t because it’s as much a warning about what is coming our way if we don’t stand firm against drugs and social breakdown, as it is about Vance. At just 37, he was elected to the US Senate.

Before his Senate race, Vance was a “never Trumper” Republican but, as he said in his speech, he came to appreciate that only a “tough SOB” could beat the Washington establishment, let alone be unfazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet. His is a story of determination and ambition in a country where you can still be almost anything if you truly have a go. He is not perfect, there’s things I disagree with him on in policy terms, but what wins me over with Vance is that despite his poor beginnings and everything in life being stacked against him, he never saw himself as a victim.

There’s got to be a lesson for us here. These days, our message to people doing it tough is that, as victims, you’re owed by society; that your circumstances are someone else’s fault. We watch our governments go soft on youth crime, we excuse away truancy and let adults get away with living on the Dole for much of their lives when we’ve got jobs going begging. Vance is a lesson that if you work hard, you can make something of your life. That the world doesn’t owe you anything. You are not a victim unless you wallow in your misfortune and make yourself one.

These days there is a lot that happens in America that I hope never makes its way into Australian society. But I think, in J.D. Vance, we just might see a politician that’s going to change the face of modern politics and that can only be a good thing.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Credlin: Powerful reason for senior Labor people to downplay real nature of CFMEU