CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As a parting gift to the Liberal Party, outgoing Nine Chairman and former Coalition treasurer Peter Costello has this week flooded his syndicated news outlets with allegations of corruption and organised crime links within Australia’s most powerful trade union.
A recent 60 Minutes report has revealed that the construction division of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) is facing allegations that their Victorian branch has been working closely with underworld figures and bikie gang members.
Unfortunately for the union-busting media class, this news has been greatly overshadowed by the fact that Former US President Donald Trump got his ear shot off by an AR-15 on Sunday.
For those Australians who still do get their news from the Sunday night free-to-air TV broadcasts jammed between ads for Gerry Harvey’s tax dodging white goods giant, the recent allegations against the CFMEU are no real surprise.
This is because, nowadays, the average Australian voter can’t really tell the difference between a heavily tatted up tradie and a member of a criminal motorcycle gang.
And in an economic downturn, anyone driving a brand new work ute can only garner respect from a nation that is currently being financially crippled by the much more powerful organised crime figures who work in tandem with politicians to continue manipulating the cost of living with grocery price-gouging and unsustainable rent rises.
However, there is one demographic of voters who are disgusted by the recent allegations against the CFMEU.
Drinking in the front bar of Betoota’s famous Mao Zedong Hotel, is a collection of ageing shearers and former members of the Builders Labourer Union.
They think the CFMEU is too gentle.
“These organised crime links are pretty lightweight stuff” says former BLF delegate, Normie Dare (85).
“Mate, we weren’t just in bed with the bikies, we were in bed with the fucken communists!” says another former BLF member, Jackie Pringle (86)
Reigning supreme on Australian construction sites from 1911 until it was Royal Comission’d out of existence in the mid-1980s, the BLF is the reason that the Labor Party was once able to get elected at both State and Federal Level with a majority of the primary vote – rather than scraping to 76 seats on preferences.
Their heavy-handed negotiation tactics and unrelenting protections of inner-city public housing caused great concern for both property developers and the conservative side of politics, before finally being forced to merge into what is now known as the CFMEU
It seems that these old codgers have greatly misinterpreted the recent findings by 60 Minutes.
“They’ve gone soft the bastards” says Normie.
