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A week after the High Court endorsed the CFMEU’s administrators, the union had to cancel a branch meeting out of concern for members’ safety. By Martin McKenzie-Murray.

The CFMEU ‘shit fight’ after High Court decision

Former CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith.

Credit: AAP Image / James Ross

It was a significant victory for the CFMEU’s administration, however predictable the outcome seemed to observers. Last Wednesday, the High Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the administration’s constitutional validity, made last year by expelled Queensland officials.

The decision liberated the union’s administrator, Mark Irving, KC, from what had been a long period of uncertainty – some six months of hearings and deliberation that had inhibited the administration’s work to purge the union of sin and return to members a “strong, democratic, member controlled, industrially proactive and effective Union, enduringly free from corruption and criminal influence”.

For six months, the administration invoked the then pending High Court decision when responding to criticism that since its creation in August last year it had been ineffectual, weak and disastrous at communication. Irving’s response was simple: there would be only hesitant industry commitment to the administration’s reforms for as long as the possibility remained that former leaders might return. Similarly, the uncertainty inhibited whistleblowers wary of retaliation.

In his first annual report, submitted to federal parliament in February, Irving wrote that his administration “has sought to address corruption and confront menacing conduct within the union and within the industry”. He noted they had done so “in the shadow of an unresolved High Court challenge which has impeded the prompt implementation of the strategic plans of the Administration”.

Well, no longer.

Union whistleblowers to whom The Saturday Paper has spoken – people who have been subjected to intimidation and industry blacklisting and are impatient for reform – have long regarded this as a convenient excuse. “Regardless of the High Court, this administration has been fucking weak-kneed and insipid,” one Victorian official says. “Hopefully they can now really get on with their work, but I don’t have faith despite the High Court decision.”

The day after the High Court decision was announced, hundreds of construction workers went on strike in Brisbane, blockading a major street in the central business district and promising rolling action. There are now abundant rumours that former Queensland union leaders are considering the formation of a rival union, having long considered the administration to be undemocratic.

A former senior official from New South Wales, a life member of the union, expressed qualified sympathy. “Look, that branch was never overtly corrupt,” they told The Saturday Paper. “I mean, you could say that the branch had leaders that had become pretty arrogant, hubristic, sort of tending to ultra-militancy and getting a bit drunk on their own power. Personally, I have no time for their leaders’ stupidity and arrogance.

“But whether that actually meets the criteria for why people should be summarily chucked out of office is another matter, and there is a depth of support amongst the rank and file up there, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to set up some alternative structure.

“So that’s another shit fight that the administrator is going to have to deal with, which I think stems from the initial mistake. Where the palpable corruption and criminality was, was the two big branches of Victoria, New South Wales. In NSW, the structure here was so rotten – it was completely white-anted by criminals – and similarly the fabric of the union is heavily damaged in Victoria because of the criminality. But Queensland is different.”

It’s not the only “shit fight” confronting the administration. Mark Irving and his deputy, Michael Flinn, are now being sued by the former acting secretary of the union’s ACT branch, Michael Hiscox, for what he alleges was his recent “adverse” demotion.

Irving has said the demotion was fair and a necessary move given the branch’s “unsustainable” loss of membership – a decline of some 18 per cent in the previous year. The Saturday Paper understands that membership has declined similarly in NSW and Victoria.

This basis for the demotion has been dismissed as disingenuous by Hiscox, as well as the branch’s rank and file, who say the likely reason is Hiscox’s criticism of the administration’s 10-point blueprint for reform – and broader unhappiness with the ACT having been recently, and controversially, subject to national administration.

Not unlike Queensland, the ACT branch was aggrieved by a takeover members saw as unjustified – there was nothing comparable between the branch’s culture and conduct and that of NSW and Victoria.

The union’s national secretary, Zach Smith, recently stepped aside from that position to focus on Victoria, where he is acting branch secretary. It is understood that Smith was unhappy with the perception that he was responsible for this demotion, but his initial support for it remains internally disputed. “I’ve concluded I cannot do justice to both roles,” he said in a statement last month. “I have also decided that while I am willing to take responsibility for decisions I make, I cannot be asked to take responsibility for decisions that are not mine.”

Meanwhile, legal action is under way against John Setka and the union itself. A class action, comprised of those who allege they were blacklisted by former Victorian officials, is “gathering steam”, according to one of the cohort. “It’s still growing,” they said, “so watch this space.”

This week, a Victorian branch meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon was cancelled the day before by the administration “due to ongoing safety concerns which are currently under investigation”.

The Saturday Paper understands that a violent factional rivalry has become such that the administration couldn’t guarantee the safety of members there. “That’s significant, isn’t it?” a Victorian official said. “That you can’t have just a normal branch meeting and your members can’t just gather to kick around the issues. To me, that suggests an administration that’s still teetering, still unable to take control and even give effect to some of the more mundane aspects of the union’s rules. All we’re talking about is a branch meeting. How are members going to have any input? How are they going to scrutinise this administration when branch meetings are part of the apparatus of scrutiny?”

The administration said they had nothing to add about the situation beyond their brief statement on social media.

More broadly, Victorian members said they thought industry violence and intimidation was perhaps worse than it was a year ago. The administration, they argued, had created a vacuum by expelling leaders but had insufficiently asserted their own power. Bikie gangs were still muscling in and one organiser said the death threats had got so bad his wife was encouraging him to leave the industry.

In NSW, there have been some wins. One former union leader says April’s guilty pleas by Darren Greenfield, the state’s former secretary, and his son to charges of corruption and bribery have been celebrated. “And some of their major lieutenants have now been pushed out the door and it’s a significant development. But there are others, still probably a dozen or so who had a strong affinity with Greenfield. They might be changing their loyalties now they can see the writing on the wall. One hopes the administrator has got his eye on these people.

“There are some positives in NSW. But here’s one negative. Industry see this administration as tepid, they have little confidence in it, and they are baffled by the executive appointments of people that have absolutely no experience in construction.

“Personally, I think they have been looking for soft options all along. And it hasn’t given confidence to the industry. Membership’s down in NSW. It’s down in the ACT, and South Australia is in diabolical trouble. Generally, there’s a theme that the union is suffering and in decline and that’s because there’s no confidence out in the industry that the administrator can kick arse.”

One instrument the administration has used to help its clean-up is voluntary redundancies. The package once included three months’ pay, which has since been increased to six months after little interest. Among Victorian whistleblowers, this has caused great anger: they wonder if the packages might effectively reward dubious individuals, and if one’s acceptance of voluntary redundancy might preclude that individual from future investigation. For those who’ve been allegedly blacklisted, it’s galling.

Last week’s High Court decision was declared “a line in the sand” by Mark Irving, a moment of clarity and a time to restate his resolve about reforming the union. So it might be, but the difficulty of the union’s reform remains as great as it ever was.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 28, 2025 as "Striking back".

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