CFMEU revelations a headache for ALP

These are, after all, organisations which have accepted millions of dollars in donations and affiliation fees from the union for decades despite repeated allegations of stand over tactics and inappropriate conduct reminiscent of the excesses of Norm Gallagher and the BLF in the 1970s and 1980s.

That union, the predecessor of the CFMEU, was deregistered by Bob Hawke, a former leader of the ACTU, in the mid-1980s. Norm Gallagher was arguably an even more colourful character than John Setka who stood down as the secretary of the union's Victorian branch last Friday.

Mr Setka, who had previously been drummed out of the ALP by Anthony Albanese in 2019, jumped ship hours ahead of media reports alleging the union had been infiltrated by organised crime and routinely engaged in unlawful conduct.

While Mr Albanese appeared to be attempting to spin his campaign to expel Mr Setka which resulted in the union boss resigning from the ALP as a response to corrupt behaviour on Wednesday, that's not the case.

Mr Albanese wanted Mr Setka gone because he was criticising the then newly appointed opposition leader as a traitor to the party's blue collar base and undermining his authority.

Mr Albanese's failure to reference allegations of criminal acts by members of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU five years ago, and the shock and horror being expressed by Labor leaders today at what Nine's investigators have unearthed, is hard to credit.

While the Abbott government's Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption didn't collect any major scalps, it did expose a wide range of serious allegations of misconduct. The transcripts are not hard to find.

Any hope the fall out from the latest exposes might be contained to the CFMEU's Victorian branch were dashed as more and more revelations came to light over the weekend.

Reports a police camera hidden in the ceiling of the CFMEU's Sydney office captured footage of a senior official being paid thousands of dollars to guarantee union support on a building site suggest the cancer of corruption had spread across the border.

While Industrial Relations Minister Tony Burke has chosen to appoint an independent administrator rather than deregistering the union, and the NSW Premier Chris Minns is moving to suspend the CFMEU's construction and general division from the Labor Party, this has been criticised as too little and too late.

The same could be said of Andrew Barr's eleventh hour attempt to distance himself and his government from a poorly timed bid by the ACT CFMEU to obtain even greater power over government procurement in the territory, and to pause accepting donations.

"The policy proposals put forward as motions [to ACT Labor's annual conference] are neither an ACT Labor party policy position, nor something that is being actively considered by the government," he said.

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That's not an iron clad commitment to push back against what Master Builders ACT and the ACT opposition say is a power grab by a militant union that already has its fingers in too many ties.

With the ACT election and Queensland elections just months away, and the next federal election due by May next year, this scandal could not have come at a worse time for Labor and the union movement.

Bob Hawke had the courage to lance the cancer that was the BLF quickly and cleanly 38 years ago. Does Mr Albanese have the stomach to do the same today?