More disgraceful thuggish behaviour by the Labor Government’s paymasters, the CFMMEU, including disgusting homophobic slurs, has been exposed by the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Less than a week after Labor Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke neutered the ABCC by reducing its powers to the “bare legal minimum”, the Federal Circuit and Family Court yesterday fined the CFMMEU and two of its officials $151,200 for right of entry breaches on the Queensland Cross River Rail project.
Senator Cash said: ‘’The successful prosecution, brought by the ABCC before it was neutered by Mr Burke, is more proof that the tough cop on the beat is still desperately needed in the building industry.”
“Mr Burke and the Labor Government are running a protection racket for the CFMMEU by abolishing the ABCC,” she said.
“But that’s hardly surprising when the CFMMEU gives them so much money that the Labor Government should actually be considered a wholly owned subsidiary of the militant union,’’ she said.
The Court found that, on 15 April 2020, whilst at the Boggo Road site, CFMMEU official Andrew Blakeley aggressively “chested” a representative of the site occupier by walking towards him with his (Blakeley’s) chest puffed and arms bent at the elbows in an imposing and aggressive stance and later stood in the path of a truck to delay it from proceeding down a road and refused requests to leave the area.
Judge Vasta said that he had “absolutely no doubt” that Mr Gibson calling the safety advisor a ‘pumpkin eater’ was “meant as a homophobic slur”. In support of that finding, Judge Vasta referred to a subsequent offensive comment made by Mr Blakeley to the safety advisor that suggested that he was trying to look at Mr Blakeley’s penis whilst in a toilet block.
The conduct of the CFMMEU organisers on that day contravened the right of entry provisions in the Fair Work Act 2009. In penalising Blakeley and Gibson $12,600 respectively, the Court ordered that they must pay the penalties personally.
Judge Vasta said: “The antecedents of the [CFMMEU] are notorious. I have previously described them as the “greatest recidivist offenders in Australian corporate history” and many other judges have also noted their infamous past.
“There is no other “appropriate” penalty that will achieve the deterrent effect necessary other than the imposition of the maximum penalty.
“I acknowledge that this penalty will still be insufficient to deter the [CFMMEU] who will, as I remarked during the hearing, regard such a sum as “chump change”.
Senator Cash said: “Mr Burke and the Government should hang their heads in shame for leaving the construction industry and its workers unprotected from this sort of disgusting behaviour.’’
