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by John Williams

The Federal Government faces continuing trouble in its “overkill” attempt to legislate the construction industry’s troubles out of existence. The reality is that Labor wants the CFMEU off front pages and TV screens in the lead-up to the 2025 federal and 2026 Victorian elections.

However, the unprecedented law and well-paid administrators probably guarantee that the CFMEU will remain hot news throughout the coming electoral cycle.

The administrators in turn are offering lucrative packages to ALP Left operatives to come work for the CFMEU, effectively “auditioning” people to demonstrate their acceptability to step up as new CFMEU officials when the administration period comes to an end (under the legislation, three years, with an option to extend for a further two).

Allegedly credible threats of violence have been made against new Workplace Relations Minister Senator Murray Watt and ACTU secretary Sally McManus. McManus is reputedly “WFH” (working from home), or alternatively has left Melbourne to go into hiding back in Sydney.

What makes this new and unusual is that pretty well all the players in the current ALP-union tiff are factionally from different parts of the Left – the largely public-sector feminist push versus the blue-singlet shellbacks.

As the ALP Right has lost most of its old anti-communist ideology over recent decades and been socially “Finlandised” by leftwing media and university “woke” attitudes, it was increasingly hard to tell leftwingers apart. That was until the CFMEU imploded, with the help of Fairfax and Nine Media.

Toothless Tiger

The ACTU has been shown up as a toothless tiger. Its officials have been for some 12 months calling on the CFMEU’s John Setka to resign without any effect.

The national union body is weak and seen to depend entirely on the Federal Government for what limited influence it has – primarily it seems to recommend national union officials for government appointments.

The other construction unions – electrical, plumbing, steel fixing – have indicated their support for the CFMEU. Expect these unions to “warehouse” CFMEU activists for future recycling once the Federal Government administrators finish.

The big construction companies are like rabbits frozen in the headlights – fearful that any slight against former CFMEU officials today will be repaid in vengeance later on. A major employer such as Multiplex – proud of its professional working relationship with some CFMEU officials – is damned either way, hoping to turn a blind eye and just get on with business.

The CFMEU business model involves selling six-monthly membership tickets – the next ticket was due on sale on 1 October. Insiders expect that the CFMEU Victoria Branch – at around 35,000 members – will have lost about ten thousand renewals by the end of this month.

Watch this space. A likely outcome of the Canberra legislation will be the de-unionisation of Australia’s east-coast construction industry, which may have been Federal Labor’s intention all along.

Yet More Dysfunction

Unrelated, the Federal Offices of the Health Services Union (HSU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) have recently intervened to restructure their respective Victorian branches.

Setting aside allegations of criminality yet to be tested in court, it seems clear enough that both unions have suffered dysfunctional leadership and severe office politics in Melbourne. In each case, union national offices have used their own rule books to avoid any chance of being sucked into a CFMEU-style political quagmire.

Ironically, this is good news for the ALP’s shell-shocked Right faction. Coupled with the departure of Bill Shorten in February for a quieter life offered by academia, the reboot of HSU and TWU leadership in Victoria should offer Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles a chance to assume real leadership of the ALP Right in his home state and ultimately, nationally. Marles has suffered in the shadow of his former boss, but he will enjoy a clear run next year.

The importance of the Victorian Right may seem magnified out of proportion to interstate readers. Up to the time that ill-fated NSW Premier Kristina Keneally and the godfather Eddie Obeid fell over in 2011, the NSW ALP had been the national backbone of relative moderation from the 1950s to 2000s.

But through cultural and social changes in Sydney’s western suburbs, the NSW Branch has changed. Someone like Tony Burke, federal MHR for Watson, would have held views in his youth not far removed from a typical News Weekly reader. Today, multicultural pressures on Labor to hold these seats have distanced the party from traditional pro-West and pro-ANZUS alliances.

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John Williams is a life member of the ALP.

Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of John Robert McPherson/Wikimedia Commons.