From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. This week nine yewspapers published detailed allegations of widespread corruption, criminal infiltration, and a gamut of other nefarious activities within the ranks of the CFMAU. Stories of underworld figures trading their leather for high viz bucky helmets for hard hats, all in order it is alleged to get a slice of the biggest pie of all taxpayer funded projects. The
scandal is set off wave after wave of ramifications. Who knew, what, when and when it all means for some of the largest infrastructure projects this country has ever seen. Today Martin Mackenzie Murray on the fallout from the scandal and its
potential ramifications. It is Friday, nineteenth of July. Martin Australia's highest profile union, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees young in to see if MU has been thrust into the spotlight, this time against its will, with a range of allegations of corruption and other nefarious activities relating to organized crime. It's a story almost as big as some of the egos involved.
What's happened so last Friday?
The head of the Victoria, Tasmania CFMAU branch John Secker announced his resignation.
Well, I'm stepping down as the secretary of this union as of tonight. I'm just sick of all the stories. I'm sick of all the false allegations, and I'm sure the members are too, so Hopefully by me stepping down it'll actually stop some of these just malicious and false accusations to just keep.
He was preempting a series of kind of squalid revelations revealed by several nine reporters.
A once proud union that defends the rights of workers on the take and in bed with criminals.
It's rotten to the core.
You've got standover going on extortion, going on contracts being awarded that shouldn't be awarded.
It involves the kind of intimate infiltration of organized crime, especially bikies, into the CFMEU, their use as security and shop stewards, something that's caused immense resentment and sometimes fear amongst CFMEU officials. A kind of cozy network of kickbacks, that is, secret arrangements with builders to favor contracts. And I think significance to all of this as well is it's implications for the Victorian government and its ambitious big build.
Take for example, the big build that goes on here in Victoria. They're going to do some building or construction somewhere. Contract will go out, the usual people will apply, there will be pressure from within the other companies won't get a look in. You've got to be with the CFMAU.
And then there's John Saka's personal behavior as well.
What message was that sending.
Well, I think the message is quite clear, and that was you speak out against us.
We know where you are and we can get to you. We know where you live. Now.
Saker is a man who for a long time has denied so I mean countless allegations of his own capacity for thuggery and vindictiveness. And even amongst those inside the union who knew what was coming, I knew how severe the allegations were that would be raised. We're still surprised at Sakka's resignation, so accustomed were they to his pugnacity, his stubbornness, his ability to survive any number of scandals.
So, as you said, in one of these allegations, the once immovable John Seca resigned effectively immediately. What other for that has there been.
It's been considerable to say, to say the least. Where to begin.
Interestingly, the CFMU is National Secretary Zack Smith. He became very, very anxious and wanted to preempt any federal intervention. He does this by coming out earlier this week and saying that the national branch would assume administrative control of the Victorian branch, and he goes on a media blitz.
Zack Smith is the National Secretary of the cfimyun our guest sax Smith, Welcome.
Good morning, Patricia Tony. Now this was kind of this desperate hal Mary Pass.
I think to preempt whatever federal intervention might occur, including the nuclear option of total deregistration of the Union. And what transpires is zax Smith effectively humiliating himself attempting to hold two irreconcilable positions.
So one is that the allegations.
Are so severe, the degradation of the Union so great, that it requires this dramatic intervention of the national branch assuming administrative control.
Well, as part of this administration, I'm in the process of standing up an investigative process to investigate any allegations, to test them, and obviously if there's any wrongdoing found, people will be removed from our ranks.
On the same hand, in the same breath, Zach Smith celebrates John Sacker and says his legacy will be an admirable one. He proposes John Sacker as a working class hero, and unsurprisingly, the journalists there was a particularly humiliating interview on the Today Show with Karl Stefanovic.
They ridicule him the appropriate action. So essentially, you're taking the I know nothing of defense.
Well, well, Carl, that's not an accurate reflection. No, wait a second, let's be very clear on this, right, you're putting words into my mouth.
And now the other kind of transparent absurdity here is that he asserts that the union itself can investigate itself. How in any reasonable world can you be trusted in any credible way to conduct your own inquiry into your own union's alleged corruption.
Well, like I said, this investigation will have independence, This investigation will draw out, drawing outside expertise and legal advice and outside scrutiny to get to the bottom of any alligation independent.
Also, now this is laughed at. It's laughed at, in fact by the federal government.
Tony Burke, the Employment Minister and Workplace Relations Minister begins the process of appointing an independent administrator. What's more, he asks the Australian Federal Police to investigate the union.
The General Manager of the Fairwork Commission is the best person placed to take this action. The action does have a series of complexities under the Fair Work Act, a series of various conditions that the General Manager is currently taking advice on elsewhere.
The new South Wales Premier and Victorian Premiere disavow the CFMAU. They say that they will not be accepting any donations from them. Victoria Police says it's undertaking several investigations, including one into Derek Christopher, who was a sort of protege of John Seckers and his presumptive successor.
So the fall it has been far and wide. What about the union itself. If you've been speaking to people within the union, what's been their reaction.
There's a pretty I mean, for some weeks now, I've been speaking with a considerable number of union officials and members, both current and former. There's been a consistent theme that their emotions are intensely conflicted. They have gratitude for the journalists who have done this great reporting. There's some relief that this extreme and dramatic public exposure has happened. There's
some fear from whistleblowers of vengeance, of revenge. There's also great kind of shame and sadness at the degradation of their union.
And there's also a lot of exhaustion.
I mean it, really, I don't think I can overstate this, that the intensity of conflicted emotions that members are feeling now is really considerable, as well as the uncertainty about kind of what comes next and how reform might occur, if at all. But there's also this bitter incredulity that it has taken journalists and not any number of law enforcement agencies or governments or statutory.
Bodies to do this.
The reporting has been immense, necessary, impressive, but the dubiousness of the CFMEU, the funk of corruption, the infiltration of organized crime, is one of Victoria's worst kept secrets.
After the break the title links between the cme you and the Victorian labor government. How close is too close? At the heart of a lot of this activity in Victoria, in particular Marty, has been the activity around what Victoria calls the Big build what is the big build, what are the projects involved? And how is the CFMU inserted itself as a player in these massive projects.
The Victorian Labor government's signature was this greatly ambitious infrastructure project, roads, tunnels, round networks and the CFMU is formally affiliated with the Labor Party. It comprises a part of the Labour's left faction. As such, it has an influence in preselections, it can influence policy. It's also a substantial donor to the Labor Party. In fact, in twenty twenty two, the CFMU was the
largest donor to Daniel Andrew's reelection campaign. In the same year, it donated about a million dollars to the Federal Labor Party. In August last year, there is the funeral for John Seka's father, who himself was a construction worker. The Underworld figure Mick Gaddo, whose SECA often used as a kind of fixer or negotiator, publicly expresses his condolences to setcam Now.
On the other end of the spectrum of authority in Victoria, just center Alan, the Premier before becoming Premier, was infrastructure Minister. She's married to a former CFMEU union boss. Pays her fealty and attends the funeral. So I think in just that one day, this funeral, you have this neat demonstration of Setka's influence. But the Victorian Labor Government's not wanted
the cfmeu's obstruction. It has not wanted its ambitions thwarted by industrial action, and as a result, the Labor Party has kind of turned a blind eye.
I have zero tolerance for this sort of behavior. I've asked the Labor Party's National Executive to move to immediately suspend the construction division from the Victorian Labor Party.
There's this kind of familiar pattern that occurs following public scandal and its politicians express fox shock and condemnation and surprise. But the possibility of deniability is utterly, utterly implausible.
Politically, of course, this is manner from heaven for the federal opposition, in particular, how are they capitalizing the Labour's close historical ties to the CFMAU and what are they saying about how this looks for Labor.
Yeah, there's unsurprisingly an amount of political theater at the moment.
That's sad.
The Opposition have very substantial legitimate criticism of the Labor Party. The Labor Party's affinity with the CFMU is well established. The bit of political theater that is a little frustrating is the status of the ABCC, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which the Albanese government dissolved last year, and it was conceived as a kind of watchdog of the construction industry. Now the Liberal Party at the moment are saying that the dissolution of the ABCC is proof of
Labour's indifference to corruption in the industry. The problem with that argument is that the ABCC did exist for a number of years during John Setka's twelve year reign, so I'm not quite sure what the ABCC was for, if not to investigate the allegations that have been added by nine in the past week.
Again, it goes to the incredulity around how it took the Fourth of State to air these allegations. The work Place Relations Minister Tony Burkers said that there will be an independent investigation. How much confidence do you have in the integrity of that investigation and as chances of finding any wrongdoing?
I think we might have some confidence now. And the reason I say that is a certain threshold has been crossed now, So I think there's been plausible deniability for a long time. There's been years of willful ignorance, but courtesy of the great reporting of the nine reporters, a public threshold has now been crossed, and I think coming with that is a public expectation of substantial intervention. So the independent administrator will be appointed, the Fair Work Commission
will make an application to a court for that. There's certain kind of formal disavowals now from the Labor Party about the CFMU. So look, in short, I think we can have some confidence, but to reflect again the frustrated members who internally have been attempting to fight corrupt forces within their union. It shouldn't have taken this long, and it shouldn't have been wholly dependent upon journalists.
And so Marty, finally, what does this all mean for the future of the CFMEU itself and its workers. Do you think it will survive? And what are the ramifications for the building industry in particular if it doesn't.
Well, Tony Bok has now ruled out dear registration, which is a great relief to many. But as I said before, I've been having lengthy conversations with a large number of officials, and I often ask them about reform, what it might look like, how likely it might be, and there's great uncertainty about that. There's a mix of optimism and pessimism. This is a union, certainly in Victoria, that has been assiduously stacked with loyalists. So if you remove them, you're
removing most people. There's also great fear of retribution. There's some pretty serious people involved in these allegations, and so that kind of fear helps retard reform. Some union officials say, so there's enormous uncertainty at the moment. I'll tell you what one official told me yesterday.
It's that it's at best two or three years away.
That is the proper reformation of this union, such as its degradation at the moment.
Martin, thank you for your time. Thank you.
Also in the use today, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wongs is Israel's operation in Gaza quote must stop after some of the fierce bombardments in months have killed hundreds of civilians. In a series of posts to w X, Wong reiterated Australia support for an immediate cease fire and condemned operations,
including many near schools. UNRWA says that seventy percent of his schools have been bombed, with around ninety five percent of those being used as displacement shelters at the time of their attack, and the nervous JD Vance took the stage the Republican National Convention for the first time as Donald Trump's running mate, in front of a crowd of
supporters sporting ear bandages in a tribute to Trump. It comes as President Joe Biden test positive for COVID a mid reports from both New York Times and CNN that he has become more receptive to calls to drop out of the race. Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. He is produced by Kara Jensen, McKinnon, Shane Anderson, Zolton, Fecho and Zia and Tangarral. A senior producer is quest Endgate. A technical producer is
Atticus Bastow. Sarah mcvee is a head of audio. Eric Jensen is an editor in chief. Mixing by Travis Evans, Adigas Basto and Saltan Veccio. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Bordeo. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. See you next week.