The CFMEU’s conduct has been known about for the better part of a decade and could have been stopped in 2019, but wasn’t. Politics kept it going. Pauline Hanson kept it going. Rex Patrick with the inside story.
It was shortly after 5 PM on Thursday, 28 November 2019. I had just sat down in the Senate Chamber as the muffled bells that signal a pending vote quietly rang in the background.
The ‘third reading’ (final) vote on the Ensuring Integrity Bill, a Bill that was to be the end of the CFMEU, was about to happen, and senators were strolling in to take their seats – Labor and the Greens on the ‘no’ side of the chamber and the Coalition on the ‘yes’ side. It was a vote that was to go down to the wire.
I looked across to the other side of the Chamber, where Pauline Hanson had just sat down with the ‘no’s’.
My first thought was ‘what the’? In all stages of the Bill’s progression through the Senate to that time, Hanson had sat with the Government. She was doing one of her legendary last-minute flip-flops.
I glanced up at Mathias Cormann, Finance Minister and leader of the Government in the Senate and the man responsible for shepherding the legislation through the Upper House, as he glanced up at me. He had a look on his face that I hadn’t seen before, that of a control-obsessed man who’d just lost control. He shrugged his shoulders and raised both hands, palms facing up.
The vote count came in at 34 votes ‘yes’ and 34 votes ‘no’. The Bill failed to pass.
Union Buster Bill
When then Attorney-General Christian Porter approached me months before to talk about the ‘Ensuring Integrity Bill‘, I wasn’t particularly responsive.
The Bill was intended to allow for the de-registration of both unions and their officials. I like unions. I like the way they protect workers, who, without collective force, would’ face total unfairness. By and large, they have their place and do a great deal of good.
On its face, the Bill looked like an attempt by a Coalition government to bust apart services in response to the needs of its business constituents, and I wasn’t particularly keen to engage.
In the interests of justice
Porter’s ‘masterstroke’ was to play to my sense of justice, however. In response to my ‘avoidance for convenience’ activities, one of his ministerial advisors dropped around a folder of court case after court case involving the CFMEU where judges, conservative by nature, were complaining in their judgements about their inability to deal with the unlawful activities the union was engaging in.
Fine after fine had been issued – large fines at that – but fines that were just considered by the CFMEU as the ‘cost of doing business’.
With all the politics being played in relation to the Bill, I decided to take sides with the judges.
Demerit points scheme
The Bill, as it was originally introduced into Parliament, was like a sledgehammer being used when a nutcracker was all that was needed.
The Government needed my support and so I set about changing the Bill. Hours of negotiations took place between my office, Porter’s office and ACTU President Michele O’Neil’s Senate team. It was a period of time where I was grateful to have a hard working legislation advisor who didn’t mind putting the hours in when the circumstances needed it.
The CFMEU was clearly the target of the Bill. The judicial brief was evidence of that. Lots of changes were made to the Bill to ensure the good unions, the majority, would not get harmed after enactment.
A demerit point system, much like that used for drivers’ licences, was built into the legislation; only recidivous Unions and Union officials needed to fear the Bill. The legislation was also modified to ensure the actions taken against a Union or Union official were to be at arms-length from any government minister. As a final protection, extra-judicial discretion was built in to ensure that adverse orders would not be made against unions committing misdemeanours.
The demerit point system was calibrated to result in the CFMEU, assuming it didn’t change its ways, being de-registered after about six months.
Target Rex
As the Bill was being negotiated, I was subjected to CMFEU standard tactics; footpath art and letterbox drops, which I didn’t really mind. I remember walking along the Rundle Mall in Adelaide in with my 12 and 14 years old daughters when the eldest poked my arm and said, “Dad, that’s you on that billboard”. She was politically disconnected enough that I could easily make light of the messaging.
I was also the subject of a threatening recording of CFMEU Secretary John Setka suggesting that at some time in the future, I might be walking down the road and have a few union members cross from the other side to ‘meet’ with me. That threat was referred to the Senate’s privileges committee.’
Behind the scenes, I was also visited by the Australian Federal Police, who gave me a counter-threat brief and informed me they were considering offering me and my two daughters a personal protection detail. The Police clearly knew more about the CFMEU than the judges and I.
I stood my ground and worked with Porter and O’Neill through the whole thing with my usual engineering logic, ignoring the politics, the associated lobbying and threats.
Integrity’s day of reckoning
My diary manager had longed for a ‘Find My Senator’ app to track me throughout my parliamentary day. I would have obliged her with an Apple Air Tag, but they didn’t exist in 2019.
And so it was that mid-afternoon on the day of the vote, I walked into my parliamentary suite and was subjected to one of those serious school mistress stares from my diary manager, “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
The Attorney-General and Finance Minister were sitting in the lobby area of my suite, patiently waiting for my return, while my diary manager had desperately tried to contact me. Porter and Cormann had popped around unannounced to make sure I hadn’t moved on the Bill.
I assured them I’d be my steady self. I vote on merit, and the merits haven’t changed. They left satisfied and headed down the passageway to visit Hanson.
We could have got a good outcome from the Senate that afternoon had politics not played a part. But it wasn’t to be, and as a result, we’ve seen an extra five years of inappropriate and unlawful conduct.
So, I’ve watched on with some cynicism over the past fortnight as those who voted for the status quo in 2019 expressed their disgust in the fallout that followed Setka’s resignation, including comments from Pauline Hanson.
The Setka Circus: get the gangsters out off CFMEU and the building industry for unions sake
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and earlier a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is running for the Senate on the Lambie Network ticket next year - www.transparencywarrior.com.au.