Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“They are making us lawless. They are making us look like thugs, like criminals. They call us everything under the sun and all we're trying to do is protect workers rights…”

RICK:

Say what you will about John Setka, and people do say a lot, but the man is a natural performer.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“One of the reasons they hate the construction unions is because we're so successful. We work in one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.”

RICK:

For many, he is the figure people think of when they think of the CFMEU, one of the country’s most powerful and feared unions.

But his career as the head of the Victorian branch has been so poisonous to the union that some CFMEU insiders say he’s completely destroyed it.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“John Setka is someone whose behaviour led me to expel him from the Labor party.”

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RICK:

From Schwartz Media, I'm Rick Morton. This is 7am.

If you walk through any major city you’ll see the CFMEU flag flying high on construction sites.

But this mega-union, made up of workers from construction to forestry to maritime workers and formerly many others, has been slowly dissolving.

And this week, the parliament passed legislation to allow another industry to walk away.

So how much of the union’s troubles can be pinned on one man?

Today, Martin McKenzie-Murray, on the legacy and power of the CFMEU Victoria boss John Setka.

That’s coming up after the break.

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RICK:

Marty, the government just rushed new laws through the parliament that essentially allowed the powerful CFMEU to be broken up. And now the manufacturing division, which represents about 10,000 members, can vote to just walk away and they seem pretty keen to get out. What's the urgency?

MARTIN:

I think this has been in the pipeline for a while, Rick. It passed quite quickly, it had the opposition's immediate support and it seeks to resolve something that's been languishing rather awkwardly, which is the CFMEU has been kind of progressively breaking up and shedding its component unions. And the manufacturing division was in a, kind of, awkwardly suspended de facto separation from the CFMEU, but they required legislation to allow their members to vote upon their departure and separation. So the manufacturing part had been kind of in an awkward suspended state for a time now. It's been suggested to me, by some in the government and some in the Labor movement, that the recent controversy that Setka’s generated, which we'll get to, regarding the AFL, and his kind of quixotic and aggressive campaign against them, has kind of accelerated the need to introduce this legislation.

RICK:

And tell me a little bit about the CFMEU, because it is this kind of giant amalgamation of other unions and I think a lot of us, myself included, don't fully understand the various leadership positions and who controls what. But the construction division, as I understand it, is led in Victoria by John Setka, where he kind of reigned supreme and he's kind of coloured the entire organisation and given this reputation for militancy, I guess, if you believe some of the commentary. What are they all about?

MARTIN:

Regarding the CFMEU itself, it formed in the 1990s, it was one of the so-called super unions and it developed quite considerable political power. And it's public image grew again quite assiduously under John Setka's leadership. And Setka himself would speak about the CFMEU as a brand. I would suggest, Rick, that John Setka is probably the most visible and well known union leader in the country. And he's been quite assiduous in developing, cultivating, a reputation. You use the word militancy and I wouldn't mind pausing on that because I find this interesting.

It's a word that both Setka and his members use to describe themselves as.

Audio Excerpt - Michaelia Cash:

“If we all recall, Mr Setka said to…”

MARTIN:

As it is also a word that its fiercest critics use.

Audio Excerpt - Michaelia Cash:

“The person who even the courts have said is a militant thug and part of the most militant union in this country.”

Audio Excerpt - Scott Morrisson:

“It was a feat which would have taken people’s jobs, and we’ve rewarded the union thugs, like John Setka, who continues to stage a sit-in in the Victorian Labor Party, Mr Speaker.”

MARTIN:

And I think in Setka's vocabulary, militancy is synonymous with heroically uncompromising advocacy.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“Well maybe they oughta have a cup of concrete and sorta toughen up a bit because politics is a tough game, I mean, you’re gonna get criticised.”

MARTIN:

He represents tough working class members and they won’t apologise for improving their wages and conditions for dirty, often dangerous, work. So it's interesting that the word can be used both to celebrate the union as well as to deride it.

So a very significant quote unquote brand. Part of that, though, is the mythos. The myth of John Setka. Again, he's cultivated this. Many officials and members of the union that I've spoken to in the past couple of weeks resent that. They fear that it's become a kind of cult of personality.

RICK:

Well, I think you're right about that, right? Because he lives rent free in the minds of so many and it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to create that urban legend. But what's his background? Like, How did we actually get the bruising John Setka we all seem to know today?

MARTIN:

Yeah, there's a few things he invokes a lot about his upbringing. One was his father was a labourer, migrant labourer, and was one of the men working on the West Gate Bridge in 1970 when it collapsed.

Audio Excerpt - News Presenter:

“According to eyewitnesses, the section of the bridge broke its back along a central seam. There was virtually no warning for the men working inside.”

MARTIN:

John Setka's father survived a 50 metre fall, but 35 of his colleagues that day didn't survive.

Audio Excerpt - Witness:

“A couple of the manholes in the top, and we can see bodies down below. We could hear people scream, but there wasn't anything we could do at that stage.”

MARTIN:

That left a very considerable impression upon John Setka. He becomes leader, Victorian leader, of the CFMEU in 2012. It's not without controversy. His being elected was preceded by several convictions for assault and trespass. There were certain underworld figures that he was known to fraternise with and use as kind of industrial fixers. But he also cultivated a certain loyalty, again, with that word militancy, that he would be heroically uncompromising and his saltiness, his profanity, were considered kind of virtuous.

RICK:

And I guess, you know, if you're selling yourself as someone who's willing to be militant then you've got to take on some pretty big battles. What are some of those battles that he’s fought in his role with the CFMEU in particular, and how effective has he actually been in flexing those muscles?

MARTIN:

One thing that's often said about John Setka, to me, is his capacity for vindictiveness, his capacity for showing vendettas. Some that are more sympathetic to him, say that that kind of vindictiveness or paranoia was forged in feeling persecuted. He's been subject to one state royal commission, two federal royal commissions. And then, of course, that was the conception of the ABCC, the Australian Building and Construction Commission. And this was never stated explicitly, but almost conceived with the CFMEU, and its monitoring, in mind. And he fought that bitterly. Bitterly.

Audio Excerpt - CFMEU advertisement:

“Malcolm Turnbull's new laws for building workers are unfair and un-Australian. The Turnbull government has...”

MARTIN:

One of his favourite phrases, he says it all the time, is that if you throw a stone at me I will throw back a mountain. Those more sympathetic to Setka suggest that, well, weaker men would have left, they might have had an appetite for 1 or 2 battles, but not the dozen that Setka’s been through. And that if he's become paranoid, then perhaps there's reason for it. That's the sympathetic look at it, anyway.

RICK:

And he certainly had a lot of support at the time, and of course now that's sort of peeling away a little bit, particularly with regards to the Labor Party because, as you mentioned the CFMEU and Labor, they've always had this kind of significant relationship, right? But that's come under strain over the years and seems to be quite strained at the moment.

MARTIN:

That really started unravelling in 2019. So in 2019, there is a meeting of his union's national executive, and it was there that Setka said, rather bitterly, that the advocacy work of Rosie Batty had diminished men's rights. Now someone had secretly recorded that and leaked it to The Age newspaper.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“What I said about Rosie Batty, well I didn’t, I just made reference to what legal people had, sort of, said in regards to laws, and that was it. There was no denigration of Rosie Batty whatsoever.”

MARTIN:

This was only weeks after Setka was convicted of harassing his now estranged wife. That behaviour was described at the time by a magistrate as nasty and misogynistic. So that blew up quite considerably. The then leader of the opposition, now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said that Setka should resign as union secretary.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“Why should i resign? Why should I leave the union based on people’s lies and little political agendas? I mean…”

MARTIN:

And Setka was also expelled by the Labor Party.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“Through his actions, he demonstrated values that were not consistent with the values which the Australian Labor Party holds dear. One of those values is respect for women.”

MARTIN:

Setka fought that, but lost. And people thought given the public disgust and criticism, his expulsion from the Labor Party, that that would probably spell the end of Setka.

RICK:

That would have probably killed off most leaders, but Setka kind of clings on, until we get to the present day. And then he decides to pick another mind boggling fight with, of all places, the AFL.

MARTIN:

A very, very strange campaign and it's caused, if not bemusement, quite seriously bitter exasperation within his own union.

RICK:

That’s after the break.

RICK:

Marty, we've just been talking about Setka going after the AFL. After all of the ugly threats and nasty comments throughout his career, the phenomenal use of power, he's still there. What ancient grudge did the AFL awaken in John Setka?

MARTIN:

Well, what the AFL did recently was to appoint Stephen McBurney as the head of their AFL unit. Now Stephen McBurney was a former AFL umpire himself but, more significantly here, was the head of the ABCC.

RICK:

Ah, there it is.

MARTIN:

There it is. So kind of public enemy number one. One of the pieces of human shit, as Setka put it in 2010, when protesting at the front of their buildings.

RICK:

So I just would be really clear about this. So the ABCC, a guy who used to work for the ABCC, they now become the Head of the AFL Umpires and John Setka sees red.

MARTIN:

He sees red.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

“So how does a person as unfair as McBurney, an absolute zealot, a union-hating, worker-hating person, how does he instil fairness into umpiring?”

MARTIN:

And he, in kind of typically pugilistic fashion, threatens the AFL.

Audio Excerpt - John Setka:

"Himself, and any other inspectors that worked at the ABCC, are enemy number ones of this union.”

MARTIN:

He says if you don't sack this man immediately, you're going to have trouble building things. So, new clubhouses, new stadiums, what's been proposed in Hobart, for instance. Setka warns the AFL things could get very, very expensive for them. Now, here's that threatening behaviour, and a quote unquote militancy, in the form that his critics would use it, right? Deploy it. What seriously exasperated people within the CFMEU was one, Setka was drawing attention to himself again. I can't count the number of people who know him well who describe him as narcissistic. And they say that this campaign, within it, it's germ is a genuine contempt for the ABCC, I should say now dissolved, and a sincere contempt for Steven McBurney who once led it. But plenty of his detractors, who know him well and work within the union, also say that this is part of John's addiction to the limelight. People are absolutely exasperated because they see something beloved, the AFL, and Setka threatening it for a personal vendetta.

RICK:

Are you shocked by that? That he was willing to take this on. I mean, it feels benign to me in comparison, but of course the entire state would be up against it, you would have thought.

MARTIN:

Yeah there's, I mean, there's a few things to be said about it. It doesn't surprise me in that it seems completely consistent with his character and temperament. That part doesn't surprise me. I think what surprises me, and bitterly surprises those within the CFMEU, is that it might be this that seriously sours Setka’s time and may, I don't think anyone's discussing this seriously, but may result in early resignation. I think unlikely, given he's just he's not really nominating it at the end of the year anyway. But the thing that surprises critics of John Setka within his own union, is kind of the Al Capone comparison. But you know it's said of Al Capone, is that for all the things that he did, it was tax evasion that brought him down. And the people shaking their heads saying Setka should have gone years ago and it's weird that this kind of aggressive, quixotic campaign against the head of AFL umpiring might be the thing that has brought the greatest, loudest opprobrium against him. So there's kind of bemusement about that, if not some frustration, that it's taken Victoria's obsession with the AFL to, like, really invite scandal to Setka given everything else, you know?

RICK:

And of course you say that he won't, he announced he's not going to renominate at the end of the year. When did he announce that and what's the thinking behind that? Do you think that he just, he doesn't think he can win anymore?

MARTIN:

I can't be definitive on this, but certainly someone who knows him very well, has known him for decades in fact, when I asked them why they thought Setka might be kind of stepping down, not renominating, their suggestion was that he feared that he would lose. And so that he would step aside rather than suffer the humiliation of losing. But I'm told fairly consistently that within the union itself, they're bitter about it's kind of dissolution. There is enormous resentment in that union. You know, it was said to me that many years were spent in increasing its membership, increasing its size through amalgamation. They said it was a, you know, a hard and patient task. It was a job of putting aside egos. And they said, it's taken Setka just a couple of years to invite such rancour that it starts shedding its own, the union starts shedding its own components. And has invited, through his own personal behaviour, a kind of shabbiness. There is very considerable resentment about that. A legacy of dissolution. A legacy of having weakened, certainly politically, the CFMEU.

I've been having a lot of conversations about the legacy of John Setka. One that is recurrently and bitterly brought up with me is the diminishing political influence of the CFMEU, especially at a federal level. I mean, I'd say it's almost non-existent now.

RICK:

Martin McKenzie-Murray, thank you so much for joining us.

MARTIN:

Thanks buddy.

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RICK:

Also in the news today...

Israel has ordered 250,000 people sheltering in refugee camps in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city, to leave as it carries out renewed attacks in southern Gaza.

The IDF has told Palestinians to evacuate to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, but has already launched several attacks on the area.

Israeli forces pulled out of Khan Younis on April 7 claiming victory over Hamas fighters, but recently Hamas has launched rockets from the eastern part of the city. Israel’s previous attack on the city has left much of the infrastructure in ruins.

And,

Several Liberal MPs have raised concerns about Peter Dutton’s push to introduce forced sale powers for supermarkets.

Under the proposed plan, the ACCC would be able to take supermarket or hardware stores to court and force them to sell off parts of their business.

Liberal members opposed to the plan warned it would create “red tape”, with little prospect of tangible benefit.

I’m Rick Morton, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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