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Fifteen months after the appointment of an administrator to clean up the CFMEU, threats of violence and retribution still bedevil anyone not toeing the union’s old-school line. By Martin McKenzie-Murray.

Life in the shadow of the CFMEU

Whistleblowers risk being excluded from union job sites.

Credit: AAP Image / James Ross

The costs have been stark for the whistleblowers. To start with, “going to war” against the corruption of the construction division of Victoria’s CFMEU has meant their effective blacklisting from union job sites. One has worked very little in the past year, and bills are due. Christmas is near. Their partner has also felt the strain.

The work they do take is complicated. They understand they’re being watched and that the decision to employ them will not go unpunished. This is part of their burden, they tell The Saturday Paper: that to find work, and financial relief, is to imperil those who assume the risk of hiring them. Or it means working non-union sites – anathema to the lifelong member. “We know that we can bring a target to ourselves as well as those who employ us.”

There is also the strain, they say, of effectively running their own de facto investigation – of engaging with a network of reformers disgusted by the corruption and frustrated with what they perceive to be the ineffectiveness of the union’s administration. It’s not just the labour, they say, which they’re committed to. It’s the work’s similarity to espionage. It’s the high stakes. It’s having to handle sensitive information with great caution, to avoid unwittingly revealing sources. There’s a delicacy to the work of soliciting and sharing intelligence, and it demands its own tradecraft. It’s stressful.

One whistleblower seems quite fearless, but in conversations with half a dozen former or current union insiders this week, there is plenty of fear to go around, 15 months after the appointment of the administrator, Mark Irving. For one insider, the prevailing threat of violent retribution that persists well over a year since Irving’s arrival is sufficient proof of his inadequacy. “Why haven’t certain people come forward, those who think that the corruption is out of control?” they say. “It’s only for reasons of safety. I mean, the situation in Victoria is so putrid – there are so many crooks and gangsters and thieves and scoundrels everywhere – that people are totally scared.”

To the whistleblowers’ costs of financial insecurity and the stress of maintaining discretion, there is also the cost of bitter frustration. One whistleblower says they’ve experienced a greater exile than the man singularly responsible for the federal intervention in the first place: John Setka.

Since Setka resigned as the union’s Victorian construction boss in July last year, this newspaper has recounted the strong, lingering support for him and the old leadership. In shop steward meetings, donations have been requested to help him. From the floor of branch meetings, members pledge their loyalty to him and complain about his persecution. The current Victorian boss, Zach Smith – a man originally appointed by Setka – is unapologetic about his continued, public fraternisation with him.

“To help the administration along and they treat you like a fucking pariah, you get disillusioned because it shouldn’t be this hard to clean up,” the whistleblower says. “But this is the journey we chose. Nobody put a gun to our heads.”

Zach Smith’s relationship with Irving is not coerced so much as co-dependent, according to some union insiders. It is curious, they say, that the Victorian union boss might so publicly support the man most responsible for scandalising the union and obliging the government’s historic intervention. The administration has had to acknowledge the evident loyalty to Setka within the union and to others closely associated with him. Insiders say the administration can’t risk alienating certain elements of membership – and Smith is a credible line to them. “But it means he’s effectively a double agent,” one says about Smith. “He has to serve dual masters.

“Mark and Zach need each other, I think. As much as that relationship is strained, there’s a mutual dependence. Zach has credibility with rank and file, and Irving needs that. But Zach serves at the pleasure of Irving.”

The continued loyalty among members to the old guard was displayed on Wednesday evening at a Victorian branch meeting.

There it was resolved to abandon the prohibition on Ralph Edwards, a former Victorian branch president and Setka loyalist, entering union headquarters. The ban was imposed by Mark Irving, after The Age published allegations of misconduct.

Investigative reporter Nick McKenzie was also a subject of that evening’s meeting. Union officials expressed frustration with the number of members who were leaking to him – their estimate was 200 – and stressed that this had to stop. Last week, it was revealed an attempt had been made to disable the CCTV at McKenzie’s home. Victoria Police are investigating, including members of Taskforce Hawk, which was assembled last year to investigate corruption within the construction industry.

In recent weeks, the Nine newspapers have published a series of articles led by McKenzie alleging fresh examples of corruption among union officials. One of the most significant related to John “Perky” Perkovic, a union veteran close to Setka and promoted by Zach Smith to serve as his deputy in July. Last Thursday, the administrator sacked Perkovic and the Australian Federal Police said they were investigating allegations he had received lavish bribes from construction firms eager for preferred treatment.

The Saturday Paper understands that such is the influence and popularity of Perkovic among Setka’s factions that the administration was anxious to handle it delicately lest his dismissal result in protests or even rioting.

Perkovic was lauded at Wednesday’s branch meeting as a strong and brave unionist, someone you’d always want with you in the trenches. There was no condemnation of the alleged corruption and senior officials stressed Smith had nothing to do with his dismissal. The Saturday Paper is not suggesting the allegations against Perkovic are accurate or that Smith had any knowledge of them.

The support for Perkovic and Edwards, and the strong cautioning against conversations with McKenzie, were the latest examples of a long-running theme: the undermining of Irving’s authority by the continued and conspicuous displays of loyalty to the old regime.

“In that branch meeting, they were basically saying that the place leaks like a sieve,” one union insider says. “That we can’t talk about these things outside the meeting. That we’ve got to fucking stay solid, protect the union. Don’t talk to Nick McKenzie. Don’t talk to [other journalists]. They just want to fuck you and the union. Well, I say that it was these cunts that fucked the union and now we’re all paying the price for it.”

Upon the administration’s appointment 15 months ago, a rump of members and officials were anxious to see substantial reform quickly – not least because their opposition to corruption was so personally costly. On the other hand, the administration pleaded for patience: they had inherited a very large and complex problem and they would need time to work forensically through it. What’s more, while the public might fix upon its investigative responsibilities, Irving’s regime has an enormous oversight responsibility. Why expect from the administration in months what Victoria Police couldn’t do in decades, insiders said to me.

Many consider things worse now than they were 15 months ago, however – a view the federal opposition has been quick to politicise. On Wednesday, Liberal MP Tim Wilson, the shadow minister for industrial relations, said: “Day three of sitting and we still don’t have any answers from the Albanese government over the ongoing calamity that is its CFMEU administration. What we have known from consistent reports that are being revealed … is that the criminal corruption within the CFMEU, according to whistleblowers, is getting worse, not better, under the Albanese government’s so-called strongest possible solution.”

Sober, experienced voices within the movement feel similarly. A former official tells me that better progress ought to have been made, especially in Victoria, but that the old regime’s influence lingers. “The fingerprints of Setka are everywhere,” they say.

A current union official tells me, however, the size of the problem in Victoria is underappreciated. It’s a systemic issue and asks questions of several bodies and institutions independently of the CFMEU. “We don’t want to talk about organised crime’s infiltration of public works,” they say. “That government turned a blind eye, that companies made use of underworld fixers – and what did the ABCC [Australian Building and Construction Commission] and Victoria Police do? They weren’t effective. I think it’s been too easy to look the other way.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 1, 2025 as "Life in the shadow of the CFMEU".

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