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The CFMEU’s new administrator has declared the culture in the union’s Victorian arm remains broken and warned that the pariah branch will stay in administration indefinitely while its sacked former bosses still exert control.
Michael Crosby’s vow to launch an unprecedented attack on ex-CFMEU bosses such as former state secretary John Setka and former union Big Build chief Joe Myles comes as he called on government and the wider industry to do far more to combat the organised crime and corruption that Victoria Police has separately warned it is powerless to tackle.
In an interview two years after federal Labor plunged the CFMEU into administration, and two months after he replaced inaugural administrator Mark Irving, Crosby said the Albanese government was aware of the progress in other states compared with the recalcitrant Victorian CFMEU branch.
“They [federal Labor] want to see, before administration ends, a change in the culture of the Victorian branch, and you can’t see it right now,” he said, while calling for urgent regulation of the construction industry.
Crosby joins Victoria Police in making public statements at odds with Premier Jacinta Allan’s repeated insistence her own government’s industry clean-up, now into its third year, has worked.
“We can have the most squeaky clean union on earth come out of administration and unless you fix this industry, with the involvement of criminal gangs in the industry they will work out a way of corrupting the union. There’s just too much money involved,” he said.
Asked if it was necessary to bolster the attack on organised crime in the sector, Crosby said “absolutely”.
“It’s up to government to come up with a solution to this. There’s just no way that you can have people like [gangland figure] Mick Gatto and the rest of them just running riot,” he said.
“This is a systemic problem across the whole industry. It’s why it’s plain as the nose on your face that there’s got to be regulation in the entire industry and not just of the union.”
Since July 2024, when The Age first revealed Labor’s signature $100 billion Big Build program had been infiltrated by criminal gangs and corrupt union and business practices, Allan has been dogged by criticism from the opposition, business groups, corruption experts and, increasingly, her own Labor colleagues about her handling of the scandal.
Weeks ago it was revealed that Gatto is still on the payrolls of Big Build subcontractors.
Ahead of Labor MPs gathering for a two-day retreat, Allan again batted away questions on Sunday about what additional powers might be offered to law enforcement, including the setting up of a new crime commission to tackle organised crime more broadly.
“I’m in constant dialogue with the chief commissioner of police, hearing from him about the tools and the powers and responses that they need to keep the community safe and, in this instance, deal with organised crime, and that there are new approaches that are needed … these new patterns of criminal behaviour being driven by too much organised crime,” she said.
Asked if she felt the CFMEU in Victoria was still broken, Allan said that was a matter for the administration but the actions she had taken had strengthened the clean-up.
“I acknowledge that is work that needs to be done and work that will continue to be supported here in Victoria,” she said.
Allan listed her actions as including her move to have the CFMEU removed from the Labor Party, but she said she had no role to play when asked whether Labor should return donations from labour hire company BK Labour after its owner pleaded guilty last week to falsifying documents.
“I don’t have knowledge of any arrangements that may have been in place for donations to the Labor Party, and you wouldn’t expect me to,” she said, adding that the $3000 fine handed out showed “the system is working”.
Victorian Labor state secretary Steve Staikos referred The Age to comments the party provided in February when asked about returning BK Labour’s donations.
“Victorian Labor complies with all Commonwealth and state donation and disclosure laws,” a spokesperson said at the time. “The donations in question were made years prior to these allegations being made.
“Victorian Labor cannot accept donations from the CFMEU and has a robust process for reviewing all donations.”
Crosby, the new CFMEU administrator, is a respected career trade unionist who has overhauled the CFMEU in NSW, calling out building companies there that have been in league with organised crime.
He stressed that he was proud of the vast majority of CFMEU organisers and delegates and that deep and widespread reform was being achieved everywhere except Victoria.
He said he was gravely concerned that Setka, Myles and other exiled union chiefs were interfering with his efforts to reform the Victorian branch.
“That’s being investigated right now. I can’t have people within the union working to subvert what the union’s trying to do,” Crosby said.
He revealed he would be “going on the front foot” using his legislated power as administrator to sue serving and former CFMEU officials blocking his clean-up of the Victorian branch. It is unlawful to interfere with the operations of the administration.
“I’m going to use those sections of the act to go after people who do this. There’s been a campaign of denigration of the [majority of honest] organisers that we’ve got working for us … And they get called dogs, and they’re attacked,” he said.
“This is the ridiculous thing about this opposition to the administration. Every day that this goes on, it’s inevitable that the administration is going to be extended,” Crosby said.
He flagged moves to expel Setka, Myles and other ex-CFMEU bosses as members of the union and block “for 10 years [or] 20 years the plans of their factions to reassume power in Victoria”.
“These people have not gone away, and that they are continually trying to undermine the work of the union, they’re not going to let us out of administration if they [federal Labor] see that that’s happening.”
Crosby said that while honest Victorian CFMEU organisers were working hard so that it could exit administration, “with Myles and company circling around, biding their time, it’s just pushed off into the future”.
Last week, The Age revealed still serving Victorian CFMEU organiser Rhett Campbell had been promoting a plastering company that had won taxpayer-funded contracts despite its gangland links.
It was also reported that Myles is still influencing the activities of union officials on Labor’s Big Build, while Setka had shrugged off police charges to continue to intimidate and undermine CFMEU reformers, including women. Myles has not responded to questions.
“I mean, it’s just got to stop,” Crosby said. “I’m just absolutely furious about it. That’s why I’m going after him [Setka] in particular. I have no tolerance for that whatsoever, and that’s why I’m going to … launch proceedings against him [in the Federal Court].”
Setka told The Age that, outside of remaining a CFMEU member, he was not involved in the politics of the Victorian branch.
“I’m not trying to influence anything,” he said.
Setka went on to call Crosby an “ALP hack” and “a f---ing idiot” and to make threatening remarks.
“If he wants to come after me, he better f---ing watch himself,” he said. “Because if I run into him in the street, it’s not going to be good for him ... He’s not a f---ing koala bear. He’s not, f---ing, a protected species.”
Crosby also responded to The Age’s revelations Myles is continuing to use his union influence to promote select labour hire firms still earning huge sums on the Big Build.
“We’re looking at labor hire in some detail to work out how it is that these particular companies that he’s associated with are privileged,” said Crosby. “I wouldn’t like to find out that the union continues to privilege companies that are controlled by criminals and that are acting against the best interests of our members,” he said.
Crosby also called out former CFMEU official Ralph Edwards, who is publicly driving the campaign to undermine the administration and working with Setka in refusing to hand back almost $1 million in union members’ funds the two ex-CFMEU directors still control despite quitting their union leadership roles.
“They are still directors of a couple of funds that hold money that really is the union’s, and we will launch legal proceedings to get that money under the union’s control,” Crosby said.
He also warned that the failure to clean up the Victorian branch meant union branches in NSW and other states that were successfully reforming would remain under administration.
“Why are they being held back by these idiots in Victoria?” Crosby said. “The rest of the country is really frustrated with what’s happening in Victoria, and you know, frankly, they’re putting pressure on me. [They say] we’re doing the right thing. We’ve fixed our operations up. Why the hell are we being held back?
Crosby said some of the CFMEU’s 600 delegates now faced a choice: back his clean-up and retain their roles or remain servants of the former union hierarchy and be found out and turfed out.
“That’s the choice those delegates have got to make. There may be some bad characters who will never change, but I would hope that [most]… might start to think at some point I’ve really got to start working in the best interests of the union.”
Crosby said his challenge as administrator was to rebuild the union into a militant but honest and law-abiding force for working people.
“I know the CFMEU has behaved appallingly in the past in the eastern states, and I get that various people in the society basically want to get revenge on it,” he said.
“But going around the country, talking to organisers, talking to delegates as they grapple with the need for reform and trying to fix this union up, you really do see the good work that it does when it’s freed of the control of thugs. Deregistration would be an absolute catastrophe for society.”
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