There’s a bit in the film “Casablanca” where the local police chief, Louis, is ordered to shut down Rick’s Cafe by the Nazis which goes like this:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Louis: I’m shocked! Shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here.
Employee (approaching, to Louis): Your winnings, sir.
Louis: Oh, thank you…
For some reason, the recent kerfuffle about the CFMEU remind me of that scene.
As far as I can work it out the narrative seems to be that Labor must have known about the links to bikies and organised crime because, well, didn’t everyone?
Of course, this does beg the question, why didn’t Labor do something about it? Of course it also begs the question, why didn’t the Coalition?
And, of course, the answer is that it pretty much suited Labor to just ignore it and give them some good deals to ensure that projects went ahead with a minimum of disruption and, if the union made a few donations to party, well, isn’t this a win-win situation?
To look too closely at something like this could open up a whole can of worms and before you know where you are, you could be looking at things like developers paying bribes to all sorts of people and you wouldn’t just be looking at links to organised crime, you’d also have to look at some of the disorganised crime that puts money in the pockets of parties that don’t have links to unions and then where would we be.
After all, those people with a long memory may recall that the Royal Commission into the Painters and Dockers led Costigan to discover evidence of the “bottom of the harbour” tax evasion scheme which implicated the sort of fine, upstanding people that were liable to be friends of the Liberal Party, as well as causing some people to make scurrilous accusations against someone that was referred to as the “Goanna”, until goannas objected to being compared to Kerry Packer. Packer denied all charges and told the Commission that he asked to be paid in cash because he liked cash, adding that he had “a squirrel-like mentality”. (In order to protect his anonyminity, the Commission referred to him as Goanna instead of Squirrel because the latter would have made it obvious who they were referring to… Sort of like the current situation where everybody knows but some people are pretending it’s a shock!)
In all fairness, I do have to point out that the Coalition did call a double dissolution in order to establish the ABCC in order to curtail the activities of the CFMEU, even though Bridget Mackenzie is shocked, shocked that there could be corruption going on in Australia. This dedicated body did manage to bring charges against a couple of union officials for having a cup of tea (no seriously!), but the judge ruled that they were allowed to do that even if latte-sipping is considered a crime by those on Sky After Dark. As for successful prosecutions and a cleaning up of the building industry, the ABCC was about as effective as a think tank involving Rowan Dean, Malcolm Roberts and Ralph Babet: there was a lot of noise, but in the end, there’s nothing there!
At to what happens now, who knows? The Albanese government has appointed an administrator and a number of union officials have been removed, which isn’t enough according to Petey Dutton who wants the completely ineffective ABCC returned so he can complain that Labor’s version isn’t as good as the Coalition one which achieved nothing. Dutton has also called for the donations to Labor from CFMEU to be returned… presumably so he can accuse Labor of giving money to an organisation with criminal links.
Whatever, I suspect that this won’t be the main issue for voters by the time the election comes around.
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There’s a good reason that charges have not been laid.
Once these matters get to court there’s no telling where the evidence will lead, and companies can end up on trial also.
And in the construction industry, what a Pandora’s Box that would be!
Right on Rossleigh, and SD,
It’s all been going on for years, and there’s no manumission for ordinary workers. It’s the big squeeze, and like all squeezes it requires a push from polaric forces. And of course, construction with all its time / cost vaguaries and huge volumes of resources in thousands of big and small bites and 10s of thousands of dockets and invoices makes for the perfect churn to be squeezed.
Many would have it, that like life itself, there’s many an argument to be had as to whether it started via a divine mandate from the gods above, or from the interaction and collaboration of a lot of bacteria and germs from within the primordial slime. In my experience, its more like the eternal yin and yang. And if the blame game gets litigious, all the wheels will fall off until there’s a designated raising of the hands …. hellalujah, surrender!
I’ve seen it and been in between it in forensic detail for years. It only ever gets resolved by confidential settlement in the naughty corner, but seldom, if ever do the players ever get brought to account. So it was always assured that it would ultimately involve ‘bikies’ (by any other name), organized crime and of course lawyers and politicians.
Just for a moment, for example, imagine the wriggling of the worms in the can that is Snowy II. And the wriggling and writhing of farmer (bikies) and the like in the renewables ‘interconnect’ roll-out. It never stops, everyone wants to get in on the act, an act that adopts more guises than chameleons on steroids.
One thing can be assured, it will all blow over, till next time.
So who now thinks abolition of the ABCC was a great policy?
Corruption is not the exclusive domain of the CFMMEU, or any other Trade Union.
Robodebt??
Sports Rorts??
Car Park Rorts??
Angus Taylor – Barnaby Joyce $80mil water buyback fraud??
Barnaby Joyce Drought Recovery Envoy – report via sms??
etc, etc, etc.
I’m running out of space………
Just another reminder of the pathetic nature of the political duopoly in this country.You want this bullshit to stop?Don’t vote Labor or Liberal.Thanks for the opportunity to get some more licks in.
Truth Teller, you speak true.
What is being overlooked is that unless there is proof, the police are not going to act. Rumour and innuendo are useless unless there is evidence.
Setka has manipulated himself into a position of power that no other leaders were game to challenge. I remember in the 2019 election when Setka appeared to me to be on the side of the coalition, acting against Shorten and the ALP. Setka seemed to have friends in many strange places.
Albo challenged Setka in one of his first acts as PM. Albo booted Setka out of the Labor party and called his bluff. Setka did a mega dummy spit against Albo and lost.
Look carefully, Albo is no supporter of Setka.
The ABCC was designed by the LNP as a toothless tiger. It achieved zip, just like window dressing. But haranguing the Unions et al drove them crazy, wasting their time, as there was no regulation or legislation to allow ABCC to dig deeper.
Just the same as what the LNP did to ASIC, defunded it, emasculate regulation and turned it into a mere audience to white collar crime. It will take years to build it into something effective, with teeth.
Don’t get me started about the civil eng / construction industry, and ethics, codes of conduct, professional institutions, unions, regulations and innumerable Acts, lawyers and politicians. It’s an age old swamp of turds, and an international phenomenon. America has prob the best coverage (except unions have been crushed), and most of the dirty action happens off-shore. I completed in 2020 a Masters thesis on it all, and Oz is (by design) pissweak. And I should note that the mandate for strengthening it all should come from the top – a top-down process (similar framing to that of OHSE), that is uber complex, and fraught, because it would give all players the shits.