Who you going to believe, me or your own lying justice system?
That’s the response of the enraged editors of the Financial Review today to the remarkable abandonment of the prosecution case against the CFMEU’s John Setka and Shaun Reardon for blackmail. The Victorian DPP dropped the charges yesterday, after it became obvious from the committal hearing that the claims of Boral executives being threatened by Setka and Reardon had been invented a year after the meeting and heavily massaged by Boral’s lawyers.
The claims were gleefully seized on by Dyson Heydon and Jeremy Stoljar (remember him?) at the Trade Union Royal Commission, but subjected to not even the most basic scrutiny; if anything, the normally stone-faced Heydon showed an uncharacteristically simpering attitude to Boral executives during hearings. But when held to the basic rigour of a criminal trial process, the claims fell apart. And fast. The committal hearing hadn’t even finished taking evidence from Boral executives.
That didn’t stop the Fin’s editorial and Jennifer Hewett raging about the result and in effect rehashing the allegations. Hewett even peddled the easily debunked lie that the CFMEU has added significantly to construction costs.
The prosecution of Setka and Reardon wasn’t merely based on some clumsily confected notes by executives that didn’t withstand the mildest scrutiny. It represented a dramatic escalation of the government’s warfare on unionism. It was a criminal charge applied to industrial relations matters — something unheard of since the 19th century in Australia. There was no suggestion Setka and Reardon were — had they made the threats alleged — engaging in blackmail for personal gain; it was part of an industrial dispute. In that context, a successful prosecution would have meant any aggressive industrial disputation could be criminalised.
All this at a time when the days lost to industrial disputes in construction are far below the levels of the entire economy in the 1990s — and at a time when construction has below-average rates of wages growth.
The AFR can rail that the failed prosecution is some sort of miscarriage of justice, but the problem is that it’s only the latest collapse of a case arising from the Heydon extravaganza. Four earlier references for prosecution from Heydon were never proceeded with, or charges were dismissed. That includes the spectacular case of John Lomax, charged with blackmail only for the AFP not to produce any evidence against him despite a highly publicised arrest.
Another five references resulted in not guilty verdicts, “no case to answer” verdicts with costs awarded, or the matter being dropped entirely. That’s before you count the various problems with defective warrants obtained by police in several prosecutions, which also dogged the failed case against Setka and Reardon. All this for $46 million — plus how many more millions on ten failed prosecution referrals.
Meanwhile, construction continues to be the third most lethal industry for workers after transport and agriculture, with ten deaths already this year.
The relentless demonisation of the CFMEU by the Coalition and the AFR has a broader purpose: to tar all unions, but particularly unions that strongly stand up for their members, as in effect criminal organisations and illegitimate participants in Australian public life. Coalition-created institutions — a royal commission, the Registered Organisations Commission, the ABCC — are then specifically employed to attack them.
Meanwhile, over at the banking royal commission, the failure of an underfunded regulator to do anything about regular misconduct and criminality by the nation’s biggest and most influential companies is on regular display.
“In that context, a successful prosecution would have meant any aggressive industrial disputation could be criminalised.”
As if that wasn’t the plan all along.
I bet we won’t see even a single prosecution of Bank CEO’s though…..or Energy Industry CEO’s now that their price gouging has been revealed. Yet the LibNats continue to spout the lie that “Unions are Evil”.
Certainly not criminal prosecutions. You don’t do that to the better class of people.
“Meanwhile, construction continues to be the third most lethal industry for workers after transport and agriculture, with ten deaths already this year.
The relentless demonisation of the CFMEU by the Coalition and the AFR has a broader purpose: to tar all unions, but particularly unions that strongly stand up for their members, as in effect criminal organisations and illegitimate participants in Australian public life. Coalition-created institutions — a royal commission, the Registered Organisations Commission, the ABCC — are then specifically employed to attack them.
Meanwhile, over at the banking royal commission, the failure of an underfunded regulator to do anything about regular misconduct and criminality by the nation’s biggest and most influential companies is on regular display.”
A tremendously pithy summing up of the whole thing.
This government has tried police-state tactics against an organization which, at the end of the day, is trying to increase wages and conditions for working-class people, while they ran interference for multibillion dollar banks which have had to admit to charging people money for no service (where I come from, demanding money on false pretences is a CRIME, but apparently when you do it on behalf of a bank it is just a “cultural problem”) and dozens of other misdeameanours which suck money out of working peoples’ pockets and into those of bank shareholders.
And yet we see Michaelia Crash out there hours after this news was broadcast, still accusing the CFMEU (albeit with a little more circumspection than her usual bald-faced lies) of all the things they’ve not been found guilty of, or even been tried for. And all with the simpering support of our very own prime minister Trumble.
What a fool she is!
Oh dear, potential LNP prime minister Michaelia Cash will have to go into hiding once again. We hard working Aussies will miss her animated ramblings of: “da union thugs, bad unions, unions bad, Beel Shortin bad, da Labor Party bad”. Millions of hard working Australians will be looking forward to the next round of Doug Cameron vs Michaelia Cash confrontation. Fun to be had by all!
With black lung in Queensland, the only party that acted to protect miners’ health was the CFMEU. All other parties: governments, departments, professions – all were corrupted.
Don’t forget how the LNP abused proper Workcover process with the pink batts RC as well, industrial deaths are just a political opportunity for scum like Abbott and his cronies.