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Despite attempts by the federal government and law enforcement agencies to clean out the corruption that permeates the CFMEU, the union continues to act with bewildering impunity.
Our latest report showing the union leader backed by the Albanese government to reform the embattled CFMEU had facilitated a clandestine meeting with underworld identity Mick Gatto over a dispute involving a construction company working for the Melbourne Airport operator, part-owned by the federal government, not only undermines attempts to freeze the gangland figure out of the building industry but threatens to turn the federal government’s forced administration of the union into farce.
Underworld figure Mick Gatto.Credit: Justin McManus
The Herald’s Nick McKenzie revealed that former national secretary Zach Smith last month directed a CFMEU organiser to attend a meeting with Gatto at a discrete inner-Melbourne location, who then proceeded to demand the CFMEU allow airport contractor Maz Group to operate free of union pressure and requested all union concerns be channelled via him.
Outraged, administrator Mark Irving has ordered an investigation and planned a draft policy designed to limit the influence of construction industry fixers: “No organiser or official is to agree to, or meet with, Mr Gatto or any other industrial mediator or fixer except in the circumstances clearly identified in the policy.”
The Gatto connection comes after we disclosed gangland associate John Khoury was paid $110,000 by an entity linked to a Queensland-Melbourne joint venture to help secure industrial peace on the Gold Coast at a meeting with CFMEU figures, just four months after the federal government forced the union into administration.
The CFMEU’s long reign of lawless thuggery and intimidation, underpinned by a culture of arrogance and silence in the building game, flowed from the 1970s and Norm Gallagher’s old Builders Labourers Federation, but even after the Hawke government deregistered the union in 1986 the same criminal elements resurfaced under different union banners, including in the CFMEU. Australia has held two royal commissions into the CFMEU and the construction industry, in 2002 and 2014, to little avail.
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We would have thought the union might have taken a hard look at itself when our joint investigation published in July 2024 finally laid bare the shocking and widespread infiltration of the CFMEU by organised crime.
There have been some welcome changes: the Victorian branch was placed in independent administration, the ACTU suspended its affiliation with the CFMEU’s construction division in some states, the construction division’s affiliation with some Labor state branches was suspended, and 14 months ago, the Albanese government passed legislation to place the union’s construction and general divisions under administration. Around 270 officials were told to vacate their offices.
But ongoing concerns over recent months illustrate how the cancerous network of thuggery, intimidation and misfeasance still contaminates the building industry and continues to stain our nation.
The insouciance with which the CFMEU routinely treats attempts to rein in corruption demands the Albanese government call a full judicial inquiry with the powers of a royal commission to subpoena records and compel witnesses to appear to stop the rot.
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