Speaker 1: They are making us lawless, They are making us look
Speaker 1: like thugs, like criminals.
Speaker 2: They call us everything under the son, and all we're
Speaker 2: trying to do is protect workers.
Speaker 3: Right. Say what you will about John Setka, and people
Speaker 3: do say a lot. But the man is a natural performer.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I hope the construction unions because
Speaker 4: we're so successful. We work in one of the most
Speaker 4: dangerous jobs.
Speaker 3: In the world. For many, he is the figure people
Speaker 3: think about when they think of the CFMU, one of
Speaker 3: the country's most powerful and feared unions. But his career
Speaker 3: as the head of the Victorian branch has been so
Speaker 3: poisonous to the union that some CFMYU insiders say he's
Speaker 3: completely destroyed it.
Speaker 5: John Zeka is someone who's behavior led me to expel
Speaker 5: him from the Libry Party.
Speaker 3: From shorts media, I'm Rick Morton. This is seven AM.
Speaker 3: If you walk through any major city, you'll see the
Speaker 3: CFMEU flag flying high on construction sites. But this mega union,
Speaker 3: made up of workers from construction to forestry, to maritime
Speaker 3: workers and formerly many others, has been slowly dissolving, and
Speaker 3: this week the parliament passed legislation to allow another industry
Speaker 3: to walk away, So how much of the union's troubles
Speaker 3: can be pinned on one man today Martin mackenzie Murray
Speaker 3: on the legacy and power of the CFMAU Victoria Boss
Speaker 3: John Sedka. That's coming up after the break.
Speaker 6: Mary.
Speaker 3: The government just rushed new laws through the Parliament that
Speaker 3: is set actually allow the powerful CFMEU to be broken up.
Speaker 3: And now the Manufacturing Division, which represents about ten thousand members,
Speaker 3: can vote to just walk away. And that seem pretty
Speaker 3: keen to get out. What's the urgency? I think this
Speaker 3: has been in the pipeline for a while. Rick, It
Speaker 3: passed quite quickly, it had the opposition's immediate support, and
Speaker 3: it seeks to resolve something that's been languishing rather awkwardly,
Speaker 3: which is the CFMU has been kind of progressively breaking
Speaker 3: up and shedding its component unions, and the Manufacturing Division
Speaker 3: was in an kind of awkwardly suspended de facto separation
Speaker 3: from the CFMEU, but they required legislation to allow their
Speaker 3: members to vote upon their departure and separation, so the
Speaker 3: manufacturing part had been kind of in an awkward suspended
Speaker 3: state for a time.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 8: It's been suggested to me by some in the government,
Speaker 8: and some in the labor movement that the recent controversy
Speaker 8: that set has generated, which will get to regarding the
Speaker 8: AFL and is kind of quixosic, an aggressive campaign against them,
Speaker 8: has kind of accelerated the need to introduce this legislation.
Speaker 3: And to me a little bit about the CFMEU, because
Speaker 3: it is this kind of giant amalgamation of other unions,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of us, myself included, don't
Speaker 3: fully understand the various leadership positions and who controls what.
Speaker 3: But the Construction Division, as I understand it, is led
Speaker 3: in Victoria by John Setka, where he kind of reigned
Speaker 3: supreme and he's kind of colored the entire organization and
Speaker 3: given it this reputation for militancy. I guess if you
Speaker 3: believe some of the commentary, what.
Speaker 6: Are they all about.
Speaker 8: Regarding the CFMU itself, it formed in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 8: was one of the so called super unions, and it
Speaker 8: developed quite considerable political power, and its public image grew
Speaker 8: again quite assiduously under John Sacker's leadership, and sec himself
Speaker 8: would speak about the CFMU as a brand. I would
Speaker 8: suggest Rick that John Sacker is probably the most visible
Speaker 8: and well known union leader country, and he's been quite
Speaker 8: assiduous in developing cultivating a reputation. Use the word militancy,
Speaker 8: and I wouldn't mind pausing on that because I find
Speaker 8: this interesting. Yeah, it's a word that both SECA and
Speaker 8: his members use to describe themselves.
Speaker 4: If we all recall mister Secca said.
Speaker 8: To as it is also a word that its fiercest
Speaker 8: critics use.
Speaker 5: The person who even the courts have said is a
Speaker 5: militant thug and part of the most militant union in
Speaker 5: this country, trut.
Speaker 1: Which would have taken people's jobs and rewarded the union
Speaker 1: thugs like John Zeca, who continues to stage a sit
Speaker 1: in in the Victorian Labor Party.
Speaker 8: And I think in Seca's vocabulary, militancy is synonymous with
Speaker 8: heroically uncompromising advocacy.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe they would have a cup of concrete and
Speaker 2: sort of toughen up of it, because politics is a
Speaker 2: tough game.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're going to criticized.
Speaker 8: He represents tough working class members and they won't apologize
Speaker 8: for improving their wages and conditions for dirty, often dangerous work.
Speaker 8: So it's interesting that the work can be used both
Speaker 8: to celebrate the union as well as to deride it.
Speaker 3: So a very.
Speaker 8: Significant quote unquote brand. Part of that, though, is the mythos,
Speaker 8: the myth of John Setka. Again, he's cultivated this. Many
Speaker 8: officials and members of the union that I've spoken to
Speaker 8: in the past couple of weeks resent that they fear
Speaker 8: that it's become a kind of cult of personality.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you're right about that, right, because he
Speaker 3: lives rent and free in the minds of so many,
Speaker 3: and it seems to be a deliberate choice on his
Speaker 3: part to create that urban legend. But what's his background, Like,
Speaker 3: how did we actually get the bruising John Sitka we
Speaker 3: all seem to know today.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's a few things he invokes a lot about
Speaker 8: his upbringing. One was his father was a laborer, migrant laborer,
Speaker 8: and was one of the men working on the Westgate
Speaker 8: Bridge in nineteen seventy when it collapsed.
Speaker 4: According to why witnesses, the section of the bridge broke
Speaker 4: its back along the central scene. There was virtually no
Speaker 4: warning for the men working inside.
Speaker 8: John Seka's father survived a fifty meter four but thirty
Speaker 8: five of his colleagues that day didn't survive.
Speaker 2: A couple of the main holes in the top and
Speaker 2: we could see bodies down below.
Speaker 8: We could hear people scream, but there wasn't anything we
Speaker 8: could do at that stage. That left a very considerable
Speaker 8: impression upon John Setca. He becomes leader Victorian leader of
Speaker 8: the CFMU in twenty twelve. It's not without controversy. His
Speaker 8: being elected was preceded by several convictions for assault and trespass.
Speaker 8: There were certain underworld figures that he was known to
Speaker 8: fraternize with and users kind of industrial fixes, but he
Speaker 8: also cultivated a certain loyalty, again with that word militancy,
Speaker 8: that he would be heroically uncompromising, and his saltiness, his
Speaker 8: profanity were considered kind of virtuous.
Speaker 3: And I guess you know, if you're selling yourself as
Speaker 3: someone who's willing to be militant, then you've got to
Speaker 3: take on some pretty big battles. What are some of
Speaker 3: those battles that he's fought in his role with the
Speaker 3: CFMU in particular, and how effective has he actually been
Speaker 3: at flexing those muscles.
Speaker 8: One thing that's often said about John Secker to me
Speaker 8: is his capacity for vindictiveness, his capacity for showing vendettas.
Speaker 8: Some that are more sympathetic to him say that that
Speaker 8: kind of vindictiveness or paranoia was forged in feeling persecuted.
Speaker 8: He's been subject to one state royal commission to federal
Speaker 8: royal commissions, and then of course that was the conception
Speaker 8: of the ABCC, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and
Speaker 8: this was never stated explicitly, but almost conceived with the
Speaker 8: CFMU and it's monitoring in mind, and he fought that bitterly, bitterly.
Speaker 8: Malcolm Turnbull's new laws for building workers are run far
Speaker 8: and understood them for Turnble government. One of his favorite
Speaker 8: phrases he says that all the time is that if
Speaker 8: you throw a stone at me, I will throw back
Speaker 8: a mountain. Those more sympathetic to SECA suggests that while
Speaker 8: weaker men would have left, they might have had an
Speaker 8: appetite for one or two battles, but not the dozen
Speaker 8: that sector has been through, and that if he's become paranoid,
Speaker 8: then perhaps there's reason for it. That's the sympathetic look
Speaker 8: at it anyway.
Speaker 3: And he's certainly had a lot of support at the time,
Speaker 3: and of course now that's sort of peeling a way
Speaker 3: a little bit, particularly with regards to the Labor Party,
Speaker 3: because as you mentioned, the CFMAU and Labor, they've always
Speaker 3: had this kind of significant relationship, right, but that's come
Speaker 3: under strain over the years and seems to be quite
Speaker 3: strained at the moment.
Speaker 8: That really started unraveling in twenty nineteen. So in twenty
Speaker 8: nineteen there is a meeting of his union's national executive
Speaker 8: and it was there that Seca said rather bitterly that
Speaker 8: the advocacy work of Rosy Batty had diminished men's rights,
Speaker 8: had secretly recorded that and leaked it to the Edge newspaper.
Speaker 2: What I said about Razie Batty, Well I didn't. I
Speaker 2: just made reference to what legal people had sort of
Speaker 2: said in regards to laws, and that was it. There
Speaker 2: was no denigration of Rosie Batty whatsoever.
Speaker 8: This was only weeks after Secca was convicted of harassing
Speaker 8: his now estranged wife. That behavior was described at the
Speaker 8: time by a magistrate as nasty and misogynistic, so that
Speaker 8: blew up quite considerably. The then leader of the opposition,
Speaker 8: now Prime Minister Anthony Alberenezi, said that Seca should resign
Speaker 8: as union secretary.
Speaker 2: Why should I resign?
Speaker 4: Why should I leave the union?
Speaker 2: Based on people's lives and little political agendas I mean.
Speaker 6: And Soaca was also expelled by the Labor Party.
Speaker 5: Through his actions, he demonstrated values that were not consistent
Speaker 5: with the values which the Australian Labor Party holds.
Speaker 6: Dear.
Speaker 5: One of those values is respect for women.
Speaker 8: Seca fought that but lost, and people thought, given the
Speaker 8: public discussed and criticism his expulsion from the Labor Party,
Speaker 8: that that would probably spell the end of Sakka, It.
Speaker 3: Would have probably killed off most leaders. But Setka kind
Speaker 3: of clings on until we get to the present day,
Speaker 3: and then he decides to pick another mind boggling fight
Speaker 3: with a wall place with the AFL.
Speaker 8: A very very strange campaign and it's caused, if not
Speaker 8: the amusement, quite seriously bitter exasperation within his own union.
Speaker 3: That's after the break, Marty, We've just been talking about
Speaker 3: Chetke going after the AFL. After all of the ugly
Speaker 3: threats and nasty comments throughout his career, the phenomenal use
Speaker 3: of power, he's still there. What ancient grudge did the
Speaker 3: AFL awaken in John Seka.
Speaker 8: Well, what the AFL did recently was to appoint Stephen
Speaker 8: McBurnie as the head of their AFL unit. Now Stephen
Speaker 8: McBurnie was a former AFL umpire himself, but more significantly
Speaker 8: here was the head of the ABCC. Ah there it
Speaker 8: is there. It is so kind of public enemy number one,
Speaker 8: one of the pieces of human shit, as SECA put
Speaker 8: it in twenty ten when protesting at the front of
Speaker 8: their buildings.
Speaker 3: So i'dfinitely be really clear of this. So the ABCC,
Speaker 3: A guy that used to work for the ABCC now
Speaker 3: becomes an AFL, the head of the AFL umpires and
Speaker 3: John Secker c's red.
Speaker 6: He sees red.
Speaker 4: So how does a person as unfair as McBurnie, an
Speaker 4: absolute zealot, a union haiding, worker hating person, how does
Speaker 4: he instilled fairness into umpiring?
Speaker 8: And he, in kind of typically pugilistic fashion, threatens the AFL.
Speaker 4: Himself and any other inspectors that worked at the ABCC
Speaker 4: any of number ones of this.
Speaker 8: Union, says, if you don't sack this man immediately, you're
Speaker 8: going to have trouble building things. So new clubhouses, new
Speaker 8: stadiums once been proposed in Hobart, for instance, SECA warns
Speaker 8: the AFL things could get very, very expensive for them.
Speaker 8: Now here's that threatening behavior. And a quote unquote militancy
Speaker 8: in the form that his critics would use it right
Speaker 8: deploy it. What seriously exasperated people within the CFMU was
Speaker 8: one Secca was drawing attention to himself.
Speaker 6: Again.
Speaker 8: I can't count the number of people who know him
Speaker 8: well who describe him as narcissistic, and they say that
Speaker 8: this campaign, within it its germ, is a genuine contempt
Speaker 8: for the ABCC, I should say now dissolved, and a
Speaker 8: sincere contempt for Stephen McBurney who once led it. But
Speaker 8: plenty of his detractors who know him well and work
Speaker 8: within the union also say that this is part of
Speaker 8: John's addiction to the limelight. People are absolutely exasperated because
Speaker 8: they see something beloved the AFL and SECA threatening it
Speaker 8: for a personal vendors.
Speaker 3: Are you shocked by that that he was willing to
Speaker 3: take this on. I mean, it feels benign to me
Speaker 3: in comparison, but of course the entire state would be
Speaker 3: up against it. You would have thought, yeah, there's I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a few things to be said about it. It
Speaker 3: doesn't surprise me in that it seems completely consistent with
Speaker 3: his character and temperament.
Speaker 6: That part doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 8: I think what surprises me and bitterly surprises those within
Speaker 8: the CFMU is that it might be this that seriously
Speaker 8: sours Seca's time and may I don't think anyone's discussing
Speaker 8: this seriously, but may result in early resignation. I think unlikely,
Speaker 8: given he's just not renominating it at the end of
Speaker 8: the year anyway. But the thing that surprises critics of
Speaker 8: John Seca within his own union is kind of the
Speaker 8: al Capone comparison. But you know, it's seat of al
Speaker 8: Capone that for all the things that he did, it
Speaker 8: was tax eversion that brought him down and the people
Speaker 8: shaking their head saying Seka should have gone years ago.
Speaker 8: And it's weird that this kind of aggressive, quixotic campaign
Speaker 8: against the head of AFL Umpiring might be the thing
Speaker 8: that has brought the greatest, loudest approbrium against him. So
Speaker 8: there's kind of amusement about that, if not some frustration
Speaker 8: that it's taken Victoria's obsession with the AFL to like
Speaker 8: really invite scandal to Seca given everything else, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and of course you say that he won't. He
Speaker 3: announced he's not going to renominate at the end of
Speaker 3: the year. When did he announce that, and what's the
Speaker 3: thinking behind that? Do you think that he just he
Speaker 3: doesn't think he can win anymore.
Speaker 8: I can't be definitive on this, but certainly someone who
Speaker 8: knows him very well, has known him for decades. In fact,
Speaker 8: when I asked them why they thought SECA might be
Speaker 8: kind of stepping down, not renominating, their suggestion was that
Speaker 8: he feared that he would lose, and so that he
Speaker 8: would step aside rather than suffer the humiliation of losing.
Speaker 8: But I'm told fairly consistently that within the union itself
Speaker 8: they're bitter about its kind of dissolution.
Speaker 6: There is enormous resentment in that union.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: It was said to me that many years were spent
Speaker 8: in increasing its membership, increasing its size through amalgamation. They
Speaker 8: said it was a hard and patient task. It was
Speaker 8: a job of putting aside egos, And they said it's
Speaker 8: taken SECA just a couple of years to invite such
Speaker 8: rancor that it starts shedding its own union, start shdding
Speaker 8: its own components, and as invited through his own personal behavior,
Speaker 8: a kind of shabbiness. There is very considerable resentment about
Speaker 8: that a legacy of dissolution, a legacy of having weakened,
Speaker 8: certainly politically, the cfme EU. I've been having a lot
Speaker 8: of conversations about the legacy of John SECA. One that
Speaker 8: is recurringly and busily brought up with me is the
Speaker 8: diminishing political influence of the CFMEU, especially at a federal level.
Speaker 7: I mean, i'd say it's almost non existent now. Marty McKinnie, Murray,
Speaker 7: thank you much, Vitoinius, Thanks Boding. Also in the news today,
Speaker 7: Israel has ordered two hundred and fifty thousand people sheltering
Speaker 7: in refugee camps in krn Unas, Gaza's second largest city,
Speaker 7: to leave as it carries out renewed attacks in southern Gaza.
Speaker 7: The IDF has told Palestinians to evacuate to the Elmazi
Speaker 7: Humanitarian Zone, but has already launched several attacks on the area.
Speaker 3: Israeli forces pulled out of carn Unis on April seven,
Speaker 3: claiming victory over Hamas fighters, but recently Hamas has launched
Speaker 3: rockets from the eastern part of the city. Israel's previous
Speaker 3: attack on the city has left much of the infrastructure
Speaker 3: in ruins and several Liberal MPs have raised concerns about
Speaker 3: Peter Dutton's push to introduce forced sail powers for supermarkets.
Speaker 3: Under the proposed plan, the Age Sea would be able
Speaker 3: to take supermarket or hardware stores to court and force
Speaker 3: them to sell off parts of the business. Liberal members
Speaker 3: opposed to the plan warned it would create red tape
Speaker 3: with a little prospect of tangible benefit. I Rick Morton,
Speaker 3: this is seven am, See you tomorrow.