CFMEU—What the heck is going on?

A story of (weird) Australian political gyrations. Coup and counter-coup!

I’ve had a number of people asking me, ‘what the heck is going on with the CFMEU?’

For those of you who are not fully aware of the CFMEU, it’s the most powerful, wealthy, militant and violent of Australian unions. It controls the commercial construction sector in Australia. It’s a huge funder of the Australian Labor Party and the hard Left in Australia.

It’s now been taken over by the Albanese Labor government and effectively neutered.

The reason people are asking me, ‘what the heck?’ is pretty simple. They want to know why something is being done about the CFMEU now instead of ages ago.

Brief background: Even people who follow Australian politics in a casual way are well aware that for many decades the CFMEU (including under its previous incarnation as the Builders Labourers Federation—BLF) has been using the ‘services’ of bikie gangs and other criminals as ‘enforcers’. This is all well-documented in Royal Commission Reports, media coverage and more for a long time. The CFMEU is full of, run by, controlled by and ‘partners’ with (alleged) criminals. Yes, it’s necessary to say ‘alleged’!

Here's what’s really going on!

The takeover/neutering of the CFMEU is happening now because the CFMEU was in the process of seeking to take over the ALP. Yes, what’s occurring is a counter-coup against an emerging political coup inside the ALP. And the ALP is using the institutions of government to do this. Plus, the Dutton opposition is assisting the ALP in the internal ALP counter-coup. Politics is most strange!

More background: On 12 April this year (2024) the CFMEU announced that it intended to take over the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The headline in The Australian Financial Review read ‘CFMEU push to take control of the Labor Party’. The article explained how the then head of the CFMEU, John Setka, (picture above) announced that he intended to flood the conferences and committees of the ALP with CFMEU operatives to control Labor preselections and the ALP itself. This Setka announcement followed an earlier declaration by the CFMEU construction secretary Zach Smith that the CFMEU intended to push the ALP to the hard Left on economic policy.

It’s necessary to understand that the ALP and Australian unions are not really separate organisations. They should be thought of as a conglomerate ‘business’ with divisions. Effectively the ALP and the ACTU-affiliated unions are one and the same. Let’s call this the Labor movement!

For many years the Labor movement was controlled by a balancing act of hard Left (Marxists) against middle-of-the-road Catholic Right and other ‘economic rationalists’. This balance dissolved almost totally about ten years ago, with the ‘Right’ pretty much collapsing in power and influence. The hard Left now control the Labor movement—that is, it has the numbers in the Albanese Labor government, the ALP and the unions. In other words, the Albanese Labor government is a government ‘of the Left’.

But as always happens when the Left (Marxists to varying degrees) achieves its goal of taking power, it quickly descends into internal brawling. It’s the ‘traditional’ sort of battle where the ‘Marxist/Leninists’ hate the ‘Leninist/Marxists’ who hate the Trotskyist/Marxists and on and on it goes. It’s all terribly confusing and rarefied factionalism to the outsider. But for those who are fans of Monty Python, the memorable scene The People’s Front of Judea (1min 18sec YouTube clip—it’s very funny) pretty much explains it all! (I’ve included and edited version of the MP script at the end of this article.)

Enter the CFMEU. The CFMEU has been a huge funder of the hard Left for a long time. This includes organisations not formally part of the Labor movement and in the past at least has included The Greens. For the Labor movement this was all tolerable and manageable. But things clearly changed with Setka’s announcement that the CFMEU was going to do a Labor/ALP takeover. Clearly, the Labor movement (ALP, ACTU, Albanese government) saw the Setka move as serious.

The reaction has been comparatively swift but had been building for some time. The mining division of the CFMEU broke away in December 2023. Then the big guns came out.

Around July this year (2024) The Age started running a series of articles, more accurately an expose´, of alleged criminality and corruption within the CFMEU. This 4-minute Age YouTube clip asserts evidence of “…the infiltration of the building industry by bikies, criminals, and underworld figures…” and “… reveals their presence on large publicly funded projects.” Well, yes, all good stuff but “everyone’s” reaction has been ‘old news recycled and updated’.

Now I might be a skeptic, but the coincidence of timing between Setka’s ‘Labor takeover’ announcement and The Age campaign just can’t be ignored. In years past, such stories of the CFMEU’s (alleged) criminality have resulted in ALP operatives and ACTU officials jumping to the CFMEU’s defence. (The ACTU is the Australian unions’ peak body tied in with the ALP.)

This time, ALP operatives, ACTU officials and a conga line of union officials have all reacted with ‘shock horror’ and claims of ‘we didn’t know this was going on!’. It all looks far too scripted. Suddenly John Setka resigned from the CFMEU in mid-July. Prime Minister Albanese ‘welcomed’ Setka’s resignation.

Then an intense campaign started in the Labor movement, headed by the Albanese Labor government, to take control of the CFMEU. The result is legislation passed in parliament yesterday (20 August) through which a Fair Work Commission-appointed ‘administrator’ is to take control of the CFMEU. My view is that, effectively, the Albanese Labor government is using an institution of the Australian bureaucracy (the Fair Work Commission) to stop a political coup from occurring inside the ALP and the Labor movement.

Wow! Is politics interesting or what?

And it gets more interesting.

The Albanese government does not have the numbers in the Senate to pass legislation on its own. Often The Greens will support Labor’s legislation. But on this occasion The Greens refused to support the takeover of the CFMEU. They said the legislation lacked ‘procedural fairness’. Labor’s industrial relations Minister Senator Watts responded, saying that “…the Greens were the only party in the parliament who decided to side with John Setka and the organised crime and bikie elements around the CFMEU…”

Align this failure of The Greens to support the CFMEU legislative takeover with their mid-July declaration that they intended to ‘usurp Labor on the Left’ and the interesting political gyrations of Australia’s Left battle really do become fascinating.

But there’s more. Because The (Left) Greens would not support the legislation, the (Left) Labor government became reliant on the Dutton conservative (Right) opposition. After negotiating amendments, the Dutton coalition supported the Bill and it passed parliament yesterday (20 August).

Summary

So let’s assume that my analysis is accurate: that the hard left (Marxist) CFMEU was attempting a political coup/takeover of the Labor movement. The Left (Marxist) Greens would not support a counter-coup of the CFMEU by the Labor Left (Marxist) government. But the Dutton (Right) conservative opposition did save the Labor Left (Marxist) government counter-coup. Again. Is politics interesting or what?

In conclusion, the Monty Python scene The People’s Front of Judea (1min 18sec YouTube clip is well worth another view. Replace ‘Judean People’s Front’ with ‘Labor (Marxist) Left’ and the Monty Python scene almost becomes a documentary!

Edited script Monty Python - The People’s Front of Judea

REG: …. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.

P.F.J.: Yeah...

JUDITH: Splitters.

P.F.J.: Splitters...

FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People's Front.

P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...

LORETTA: And the People's Front of Judea.

P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...

REG: What?

LORETTA: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.

REG: We're the People's Front of Judea!

LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front…