Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: When footage of a CFMU health inspector assaulting a woman
Speaker 1: was made public last week, it shocked a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but many union members weren't surprised. It's been six months
Speaker 1: since the CFMU, one of Australia's most powerful unions, was
Speaker 1: put under federal administration, but now the lawyer tasked with
Speaker 1: investigating corruption is openly saying not only has it not improved,
Speaker 1: it's worse than he could have imagined. Today Associate editor
Speaker 1: of the Saturday Paper, Martin Mackenzie Murray on the union
Speaker 1: members fighting back and whether the CFMU can be saved
Speaker 1: and just a warning there's some strong language in this episode.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, March twenty four. Marty. You've got a lot
Speaker 1: of contacts within the if MEU. So I imagine you
Speaker 1: were getting handed last week after the sixty minutes expose.
Speaker 1: What were you hearing?
Speaker 2: There are a lot of conversations, but the footage, for instance,
Speaker 2: of a dubiously appointed health inspector to the CFMU bashing
Speaker 2: a woman on site might have shocked the public. It
Speaker 2: didn't shock anyone I was speaking to.
Speaker 3: What it showed, was utterly shocked. It's a cowardly attack
Speaker 3: on a woman carried out by a cf ME, you
Speaker 3: health and safety represent.
Speaker 2: In fact, one person said to me, see, I've been
Speaker 2: fucking telling you. These gangsters have gone fucking nowhere. And
Speaker 2: the surprise appearance of the eminent barrister Jeffrey Watson, who
Speaker 2: was appointed by the administration to investigate corruption. His surprising
Speaker 2: appearance was very pleasing to people because they saw a
Speaker 2: man at pains to describe the scale of corruption.
Speaker 4: You can see what's happened. It's just become a place
Speaker 4: of resort or retreat for bikis to come in and
Speaker 4: take control over business. It's like a cancer spreading.
Speaker 2: The next day, following Sunday evening, sixty minutes National Secretary
Speaker 2: Zach Smith issuing a call an emergency meeting amongst shop
Speaker 2: stewards would be held the next morning day is Tuesday,
Speaker 2: at ten am, and attendance was compulsory.
Speaker 1: So the meeting was called as a matter of urgency.
Speaker 1: It was compulsory. What came out of that emergency meeting, so.
Speaker 2: I knew a number there, and soon after the meeting ended,
Speaker 2: I saw the three resolutions that emerged from that meeting.
Speaker 2: There's two rather thin pages comprised of these three resolutions,
Speaker 2: and I got to say number one and number two
Speaker 2: were kind of thin and platitudinous and unsurprising. So in
Speaker 2: the first resolution they resolved to denounce the bashing of women. Surprisingly,
Speaker 2: number two resolved to denounce the insinuation of gangsters in
Speaker 2: their union. Well, of course that was they were obliged
Speaker 2: to say that. But resolution number three interested me. For one,
Speaker 2: it spoke to a proposal to revise the eligibility criteria
Speaker 2: of shop stewards. This might seem like a small or
Speaker 2: trivial or prosaic matter, but it actually speaks, I think,
Speaker 2: to the heart of corruption. And the reason it surprised
Speaker 2: me is that the proposed eligibility criteria for shop stewards,
Speaker 2: which included the fact that they should be members of
Speaker 2: the union for at least five years, that they should
Speaker 2: demonstrate certain values that accord with the union, that they
Speaker 2: sign the National Code of Conduct, and critically, that they
Speaker 2: be nominated and voted on by their own peers, were
Speaker 2: all proposals. Now, this is offered as evidence of their
Speaker 2: commitment to reforming the union, but it begged the question
Speaker 2: this is what I find interesting the revised eligibility. These
Speaker 2: standards are so basic that it begs the question of
Speaker 2: why they weren't imposed earlier, and why indeed they weren't
Speaker 2: imposed by the administration itself given its six month lifespan.
Speaker 1: So far, tell me what it is a shop steward
Speaker 1: actually does and why this proposal is so significant.
Speaker 2: So, a shop shut is one of the most basic, elemental,
Speaker 2: critical positions in the union.
Speaker 5: They're the union.
Speaker 2: Representative on the floor of a site. So let's say
Speaker 2: a factory floor. Union members on that site should, ideally,
Speaker 2: theoretically that doesn't happen, vote upon their union representative, who
Speaker 2: on that work site will represent them to management. What's happened.
Speaker 2: What's one of the many processes that have been corrupted,
Speaker 2: is that democratic process of nomination and appointment has more
Speaker 2: or less been discarded. When you circumvent the democratic process,
Speaker 2: incredibly dubious people are appointed. Gangsters, people with heavy heavy
Speaker 2: criminal convictions, people allegedly dealing drugs from scites, and critically,
Speaker 2: people with tiny or no experience in the industry.
Speaker 1: So they've got these new resolutions and peers will now
Speaker 1: pick the shop stewards. It all sounds pretty basic, so
Speaker 1: changing that even if it should have happened much earlier,
Speaker 1: it's a step forward.
Speaker 2: Nonetheless, Ah well, I'm not so sure about that. The
Speaker 2: three resolutions are quite scant, and one thing you'll notice
Speaker 2: in resolution number three is it doesn't speak to whether
Speaker 2: or not these new criteria would apply retrospectively. Now, I
Speaker 2: seriously doubt that they will, and the reason for that
Speaker 2: is not many current shop stewards would actually fulfill.
Speaker 5: The new proposed test.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: What's more, as one official pointed out to me, and
Speaker 2: this is a direct quote, You've got to be fucking
Speaker 2: kidding me, He says, what's the likelihood of they open
Speaker 2: up this democratic process that should have always existed? But
Speaker 2: the problem being that the current shop steward on a
Speaker 2: site is a biki. So what are the chances of
Speaker 2: someone now standing up to them and saying, I challenge you.
Speaker 1: Doesn't pass the much vaunted pub test.
Speaker 2: No No, And as one former leader said, if that
Speaker 2: resolution is not applied retrospectively, and they doubt it will be,
Speaker 2: then it's simply window dressing what's been proposed.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, union members fight back.
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Speaker 1: When all his fares blew up and administrator was appointed
Speaker 1: Mark Irving case, can you tell me what his brief
Speaker 1: was and what he's done so far.
Speaker 2: So to clean up corruption? I mean this was the
Speaker 2: line that was offered a lot, to clean up corruption
Speaker 2: thoroughly and then return the union to members.
Speaker 7: It is a core function of a union to make
Speaker 7: sure its own ranks are free of corruption. And even
Speaker 7: though they might have been asleep on the job, part
Speaker 7: of the administration is to go in and to address
Speaker 7: wrongdoing within its own ranks and then within industry in general.
Speaker 2: About Mark Irving himself, the same complaints have been made
Speaker 2: to me by so many people across several states, and
Speaker 2: that is that he is aloof He gives the appearance
Speaker 2: of arrogance, and he has repeatedly failed to communicate very
Speaker 2: basic things. Now, what has been done broadly well, Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Watson would say to us not much on the corruption front.
Speaker 2: That the insinuation of gangsters on work sites, particularly in
Speaker 2: Victoria and particularly on government state government projects is as
Speaker 2: pregnant as ever, Marty.
Speaker 1: The union's progress in cleaning up its own act has
Speaker 1: been slow, but there's been some developments outside of the union.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what's been happening there?
Speaker 2: So I learned some months ago of this idea to
Speaker 2: run a class action against a former Victorian leader, John Sakka,
Speaker 2: as well as the union itself.
Speaker 5: This week that proposed class.
Speaker 2: Action was finally made public by a Melbourne law firm.
Speaker 5: Called Adeiro Law.
Speaker 2: So for about two months now they've been speaking to
Speaker 2: I think several dozen current and former CFMAU members who
Speaker 2: have been blacklisted for a variety of reasons, but usually
Speaker 2: their opposition to set for himself or a bunch of
Speaker 2: dubiously appointed delegates shop stewarts. They suspect the figure of
Speaker 2: allegedly blacklisted members could be about three hundred and they're
Speaker 2: unaware of any legal basis for.
Speaker 1: This and what could some of the possible outcomes be
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 2: So one of the parties to this class action, a
Speaker 2: current member who has not worked for some time, is
Speaker 2: very excited about this, and they're excited because they feel
Speaker 2: that in the process of discovery there could be the
Speaker 2: coercive powers of revealing phone records, for instance, So who
Speaker 2: called who at this point when suddenly a number of
Speaker 2: bike he's arrived on site. Not only that, but what
Speaker 2: government knew, particularly the Victorian state government, and trying to
Speaker 2: kind of sketch out some causality between the timing of
Speaker 2: calls and the appearance of certain people on sites.
Speaker 1: So you just mentioned the state government who were funding
Speaker 1: a lot of the projects where this corruption was taking place.
Speaker 1: What's been their reaction to the latest revelations and this class.
Speaker 5: Action, in a word, pathetic. I think what we've said
Speaker 5: recently was rather fastical.
Speaker 2: Nine series of stories that ran about seven months ago
Speaker 2: and that triggered the appointment of a national administration. Obviously
Speaker 2: incredibly important and influential, but stories of the insinuation of
Speaker 2: gangsters on sites, the use of underworld figures to provide
Speaker 2: quote unquote industrial relations services, but which is effectively allegedly racketeering.
Speaker 5: This is an open secret.
Speaker 2: It has been for an extremely but after the sixty
Speaker 2: Minutes story aired, Jacinta Allen announced a new police operation
Speaker 2: called Operation Hawk that would look into the allegations raised
Speaker 2: by Jeffrey Watson on sixty Minutes.
Speaker 8: What we saw last night with further revelations and information
Speaker 8: was again shocking and completely unacceptable, which is why this
Speaker 8: morning I met with the Acting Chief Commissioner of Police,
Speaker 8: and that's why I support the actions that the Victoria
Speaker 8: Police are taking to immediately establish Operation Hawk. Operation Hawk
Speaker 8: will investigate these new allegations but also to pursue a focus.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is that Operation Begame about nine
Speaker 2: months ago.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: This embarrassed Victoria Police who had to put out a
Speaker 2: statement saying well, actually, this operation already exists and has
Speaker 2: been going for some time, which exposed the government's kind
Speaker 2: of bizarre ignorant of it. And as I've reported before,
Speaker 2: as many many members, officials, former leaders know, the union
Speaker 2: corruption cannot flourish on its own. It must be in
Speaker 2: party with others, dodgy developers and gangsters. And there's a
Speaker 2: fourth party and that is the state government that has
Speaker 2: one enjoyed donations from this union and two for a
Speaker 2: long time has tathered its ambitions to major public works.
Speaker 2: When the Big Build was announced, which is a range
Speaker 2: of civic works valued at about one hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 2: very conspicuous projects all over Victoria, particularly Melbourne. The Victorian
Speaker 2: government did not want a disruptive, uncooperative, aggressive union.
Speaker 5: They wanted a cooperative one.
Speaker 2: So there is a question to be asked here about
Speaker 2: the specific powers of state police federal police, but also
Speaker 2: the motivation curiosity interest of the state government. One potential
Speaker 2: solution that has been floated by Peter Dutton. There's no
Speaker 2: detail on this, but I know of plenty in the
Speaker 2: Union who actually consider it a good idea is anti
Speaker 2: racketeering legislation, something that resembles what was introduced in America
Speaker 2: to combat gangsterism and particularly the Teamster's Union.
Speaker 5: I mean plenty think that if Peter.
Speaker 2: Dutton led government is elected, the CFMAU won't much longer exist.
Speaker 1: And if it does continue to exist, Marty, what will
Speaker 1: it take to clean up? In your view?
Speaker 2: I couldn't possibly say. If Jeffrey Watson looks like he
Speaker 2: has vertigo looking at the scale of corruption, and when
Speaker 2: I see the political response in curiosity and kind of
Speaker 2: fascical media handling of stuff. I'm not sure I see
Speaker 2: an environment in which this can be effectively and quickly
Speaker 2: cleaned up.
Speaker 1: Marty, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, Australian households in about one million
Speaker 1: small businesses will get a one hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 1: subsidy on the energy bills from July one. The Treasurer
Speaker 1: has announced the rebate is an extension of the government's
Speaker 1: current subsidies and will run until the end of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five at least, with Jim Charmers leaving the door
Speaker 1: open to extending them further. And the head of the
Speaker 1: National Anti Corruption Commission, Paul Breredon, has continued to hold
Speaker 1: senior roles in the arm of Reserves despite the wadsdog
Speaker 1: investigating matters relating to defense. When contacted by the ABC,
Speaker 1: the NAC confirmed mister Bredon had recused himself in investigating
Speaker 1: six defense matters, but did not say whether he was
Speaker 1: involved in a referral or relating to our forty five
Speaker 1: billion dollar federal defense contract for building for frigates. The
Speaker 1: Commission did confirm that mister Brewden is self managing his
Speaker 1: own potential conflicts of interest. The revelations come ahead of
Speaker 1: the Knack appearing before a Senate committee on Thursday. I'm
Speaker 1: Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.