This masthead reported on Tuesday that the government would impose tight control on key parts of the union after days of revelations about its ties to organised crime, as employers call for a judicial inquiry into allegations of kickback offers and other deals that have driven up the cost of construction.
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Burke said that administration was the toughest response to the allegations.
“Why an administrator and why not deregistration? When Bob Hawke took the action of deregistration, that was the toughest action you could take to clean up an organisation. The way industrial relations works under the Fair Work Act means that the toughest action that can be taken [today] is to appoint an administrator.”
Senior cabinet ministers had already played down the option of deregistering the union because this could repeat the mistakes made with a precursor to the CFMEU, the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), after it continued its misconduct despite being deregistered.
Burke said a regulator-appointed administrator would have power to work across the broader union and take action against bad-behaving unionists.
“I want to make sure that [the] regulator has no barriers in dealing with any part of the construction division not limited to Victoria. Not limited to Victoria. So I want them to be able to have the full powers to be able to act in the public interest,” he said.
“I should add an administrator, as well as having the capacity to terminate people as employees or delegates in different roles, they also would usually have the capacity as well to look specifically at funding decisions that are made because some of what has been reported in recent times goes particularly to flows of cash.”
Albanese said it was also clear to him the position of NSW CFMEU secretary Darren Greenfield was “untenable” following fresh reporting over his bribery charges, which remain untested by a court.
“That’s why administrators will be put in,” Albanese said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the appointment of an administrator was the “weakest possible response” from the government.
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“That’s like going into one of the bikie organisations and the police saying let’s just change out the leadership here and put in an administrator and somehow the activities of the bikies will correct itself. It’s a complete nonsense. It’s an abrogation of the Prime Minister’s responsibility,” he said at a press conference in Brisbane.
In a statement, Furlong said he had already begun sharing information with regulatory and law enforcement bodies, and “requesting evidence about alleged contraventions from a wide variety of participants in the building and construction industry.”
The move to appoint an outsider to run the union gained momentum on Tuesday after the CFMEU national secretary, Zach Smith, voiced his support for John Setka, who quit as secretary of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU on Friday, and argued that action by the national office would be enough to deal with the problems.
Burke said his decision wasn’t based on a radio interview, but on mounting evidence. He said that while Labor had previously dealt with union thuggery, “dealing with organised crime is a different order altogether.”
Burke paid tribute to the investigations by this masthead and The Australian Financial Review in providing new information that prompted the intervention.
“There is no doubt that new information has emerged in recent days and over the last week, the work of [journalist] Nick McKenzie in particular, that the whole team around that has been extraordinary. And so there is no doubt that the evidence that we are dealing with now is quite different to what was publicly available.”
Burke said he had not heard of any links with organised crime before last week.
More to come