They are making us lawless, They are making us look like thugs, like criminals.
They call us everything under the son, and all we're trying to do is protect workers.
Right. Say what you will about John Setka, and people do say a lot. But the man is a natural performer.
One of the reasons I hope the construction unions because we're so successful. We work in one of the most dangerous jobs.
In the world. For many, he is the figure people think about when they think of the CFMU, 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 CFMYU insiders say he's completely destroyed it.
John Zeka is someone who's behavior led me to expel him from the Libry Party.
From shorts media, I'm Rick Morton. This is seven AM. 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 mackenzie Murray on the legacy and power of the CFMAU Victoria Boss John Sedka. That's coming up after the break.
Mary.
The government just rushed new laws through the Parliament that is set actually allow the powerful CFMEU to be broken up. And now the Manufacturing Division, which represents about ten thousand members, can vote to just walk away. And that seem pretty keen to get out. What's the urgency? 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 CFMU has been kind of progressively breaking up and shedding its component unions, and the Manufacturing Division was in an 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 set has generated, which will get to regarding the AFL and is kind of quixosic, an aggressive campaign against them, has kind of accelerated the need to introduce this legislation.
And to 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 colored the entire organization and given it this reputation for militancy. I guess if you believe some of the commentary, what.
Are they all about.
Regarding the CFMU itself, it formed in the nineteen nineties, was one of the so called super unions, and it developed quite considerable political power, and its public image grew again quite assiduously under John Sacker's leadership, and sec himself would speak about the CFMU as a brand. I would suggest Rick that John Sacker is probably the most visible and well known union leader country, and he's been quite
assiduous in developing cultivating a reputation. Use the word militancy, and I wouldn't mind pausing on that because I find this interesting. Yeah, it's a word that both SECA and his members use to describe themselves.
If we all recall mister Secca said.
To as it is also a word that its fiercest critics use.
The person who even the courts have said is a militant thug and part of the most militant union in this country, trut.
Which would have taken people's jobs and rewarded the union thugs like John Zeca, who continues to stage a sit in in the Victorian Labor Party.
And I think in Seca's vocabulary, militancy is synonymous with heroically uncompromising advocacy.
Well, maybe they would have a cup of concrete and sort of toughen up of it, because politics is a tough game.
I mean, you're going to criticized.
He represents tough working class members and they won't apologize for improving their wages and conditions for dirty, often dangerous work. So it's interesting that the work 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.
Well, I think you're right about that, right, because he lives rent and 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 Sitka we all seem to know today.
Yeah, there's a few things he invokes a lot about his upbringing. One was his father was a laborer, migrant laborer, and was one of the men working on the Westgate Bridge in nineteen seventy when it collapsed.
According to why witnesses, the section of the bridge broke its back along the central scene. There was virtually no warning for the men working inside.
John Seka's father survived a fifty meter four but thirty five of his colleagues that day didn't survive.
A couple of the main holes in the top and we could see bodies down below.
We could hear people scream, but there wasn't anything we could do at that stage. That left a very considerable impression upon John Setca. He becomes leader Victorian leader of the CFMU in twenty twelve. 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 fraternize with and users kind of industrial fixes, 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.
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 CFMU in particular, and how effective has he actually been at flexing those muscles.
One thing that's often said about John Secker 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 to 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 CFMU and it's monitoring in mind, and he fought that bitterly, bitterly. Malcolm Turnbull's new laws for building workers are run far
and understood them for Turnble government. One of his favorite phrases he says that all the time is that if you throw a stone at me, I will throw back a mountain. Those more sympathetic to SECA suggests that while weaker men would have left, they might have had an appetite for one or two battles, but not the dozen that sector has been through, and that if he's become paranoid, then perhaps there's reason for it. That's the sympathetic look at it anyway.
And he's certainly had a lot of support at the time, and of course now that's sort of peeling a way a little bit, particularly with regards to the Labor Party, because as you mentioned, the CFMAU 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.
That really started unraveling in twenty nineteen. So in twenty nineteen there is a meeting of his union's national executive and it was there that Seca said rather bitterly that the advocacy work of Rosy Batty had diminished men's rights, had secretly recorded that and leaked it to the Edge newspaper.
What I said about Razie 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.
This was only weeks after Secca was convicted of harassing his now estranged wife. That behavior 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 Alberenezi, said that Seca should resign as union secretary.
Why should I resign?
Why should I leave the union?
Based on people's lives and little political agendas I mean.
And Soaca was also expelled by the Labor Party.
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.
Seca fought that but lost, and people thought, given the public discussed and criticism his expulsion from the Labor Party, that that would probably spell the end of Sakka, It.
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 a wall place with the AFL.
A very very strange campaign and it's caused, if not the amusement, quite seriously bitter exasperation within his own union.
That's after the break, Marty, We've just been talking about Chetke 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 Seka.
Well, what the AFL did recently was to appoint Stephen McBurnie as the head of their AFL unit. Now Stephen McBurnie was a former AFL umpire himself, but more significantly here was the head of the ABCC. Ah there it is there. It is so kind of public enemy number one, one of the pieces of human shit, as SECA put it in twenty ten when protesting at the front of their buildings.
So i'dfinitely be really clear of this. So the ABCC, A guy that used to work for the ABCC now becomes an AFL, the head of the AFL umpires and John Secker c's red.
He sees red.
So how does a person as unfair as McBurnie, an absolute zealot, a union haiding, worker hating person, how does he instilled fairness into umpiring?
And he, in kind of typically pugilistic fashion, threatens the AFL.
Himself and any other inspectors that worked at the ABCC any of number ones of this.
Union, says, if you don't sack this man immediately, you're going to have trouble building things. So new clubhouses, new stadiums once been proposed in Hobart, for instance, SECA warns the AFL things could get very, very expensive for them. Now here's that threatening behavior. And a quote unquote militancy in the form that his critics would use it right deploy it. What seriously exasperated people within the CFMU was one Secca 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 its germ, is a genuine contempt for the ABCC, I should say now dissolved, and a sincere contempt for Stephen 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 SECA threatening it for a personal vendors.
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, 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 CFMU is that it might be this that seriously sours Seca'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 not renominating it at the end of the year anyway. But the thing that surprises critics of John Seca within his own union is kind of the
al Capone comparison. But you know, it's seat of al Capone that for all the things that he did, it was tax eversion that brought him down and the people shaking their head saying Seka 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 approbrium against him. So there's kind of amusement about that, if not some frustration that it's taken Victoria's obsession with the AFL to like really invite scandal to Seca given everything else, you.
Know, 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.
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 SECA 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 its 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 hard and patient task. It was a job of putting aside egos, And they said it's taken SECA just a couple of years to invite such rancor that it starts shedding its own union, start shdding its own components, and as invited through his own personal behavior,
a kind of shabbiness. There is very considerable resentment about that a legacy of dissolution, a legacy of having weakened, certainly politically, the cfme EU. I've been having a lot of conversations about the legacy of John SECA. One that is recurringly and busily 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. Marty McKinnie, Murray, thank you much, Vitoinius, Thanks Boding. Also in the news today, Israel has ordered two hundred and fifty thousand people sheltering in refugee camps in krn Unas, 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 Elmazi Humanitarian Zone, but has already launched several attacks on the area.
Israeli forces pulled out of carn Unis on April seven, 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 sail powers for supermarkets. Under the proposed plan, the Age Sea would be able to take supermarket or hardware stores to court and force
them to sell off parts of the business. Liberal members opposed to the plan warned it would create red tape with a little prospect of tangible benefit. I Rick Morton, this is seven am, See you tomorrow.