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Nicely, properly, properly. It seems like Daintree is coming to Dunsinane. Yesterday’s story in The Age, as to investigations into the Well being Employees Union (HWU, truly the Well being Companies Union, Victoria No.1) and its vastly, ludicrously inflated printing invoice — $2,800,000, multiples of tens of occasions the quantity of comparable unions — and into the non-public spending of HWU head Diana Asmar, have turned the fireplace on a union that actually does deserve consideration.
However, ah, they will’t do it with no detour drive-by on the CFMEU. HWU management is going through scrutiny that they might have put $2.8 million in print prices by means of a probably shonky printing fund, by means of which the vastly bigger CFMEU might have put… $180,000. Nicely, it’s a hook, I assume. The story alleges the CFMEU was doing that to assist Asmar’s reelection as head of the HWU. Not good if true, however small potatoes in comparison with the allegations in opposition to the HWU.
Let’s roll the backstory, as briefly as attainable. The HWU is mostly a state department of the bigger Well being Companies Union, and it represents individuals like hospital porters and others; low-skilled staff who guarantee hospitals truly work. They’re most in want of a combating union. As an alternative, within the 2000s, the HSU was taken over by a gaggle on the precise whose inspiration for union work was much less The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and extra Werner Herzog’s bad-guy flip within the Jack Reacher films (“ve take all the pieces ve can carry and zen ve transfer on”).
HSU head Kathy Jackson so abused that privilege that her fellow colleagues got down to oust her, at which level she posed as a corruption-buster — gaining the endorsement of Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott — till she was reverse-pinged for corrupt misuse of union funds for private use, fastidiously hidden by, er, her giving her vacation movies to 4 Corners.
The lacking element in CFMEU protection, refined hints of wrongdoing, and Labor takes out the trash
The HSU disaster allowed for Asmar, then intently related to Invoice Shorten, to take over the union and current herself as a pair of fresh fingers. She introduced in factional pal Kimberley Kitching, spouse of vibrant id Andrew Landeryou, as common supervisor. Kitching was pinged with the allegation of criminality — taking worksite organiser accreditation checks for different individuals — however her profession sailed on regardless.
Then, within the mid-2010s, the secure faction system broke up in Victoria. Stephen Conroy and Invoice Shorten broke up the unified “Brief-Cons”, and Shorten allied with Adem Somyurek, a former SDA, disgruntled with the union’s management by Irish-Dutch non secular nutters. They established the Mods (i.e. Moderates faction) largely out of non-Anglo Labor teams who had connected to the SDA and weren’t getting a lot from them.
This new “Centre Alliance” on the precise was matched by uproar on the left because the CFMEU exited the Socialist Left and created an “Industrial Left” faction with the rail and tram RTBU, headed by the Venus of Hobson’s Bay, Luba Grigorovitch, now member for Kororoit, at the moment holidaying on a superyacht she rented — $250k for every week, in response to The Australian’s Margin Name — with new husband, enterprise capitalist Ben Grey.
The push by the Centre Alliance and Industrial Left — which had been marching on to take over the get together earlier than the 2019 loss, and after that to regain the management — got here aside in 2020 when Somyurek was caught on very high-quality, espionage-level video organising branch-stacking from the workplace of his one-time mentor Anthony Byrne, the previous member for Holt and ASIO’s most enduring champion within the Home.
This pirate ship of desperadoes — faction is actually too flattering — was more and more seen by the opposite factions as a nuisance and distraction. In 2018, Asmar, in conferences with Dan Andrews, had gained the HWU a $1.2 million contract to conduct coaching classes for hospital employees.
These classes, these truly performed, had been farcical, because the “Operation Daintree” investigation into them demonstrated. The query is whether or not anybody within the get together truly believed for a second the cash could be spent on precise competent coaching, for precise members. Likely Victorian Labor’s intentions had been pure. It simply seems like a pay-off for political peace forward of an election, performed with official funds.
The true story of Kimberley Kitching and the Labor gang
The ultimate act of this very mid Macbeth? The tragic loss of life of Kimberley Kitching from a coronary heart assault was adopted, within the days after, by radio interviews the place Shorten recommended that the stress of inside get together politics had contributed to Kitching’s loss of life, and Asmar writing an op-ed for the Herald Solar in March 2022 — two months out from the election — asserting that Labor Get together bullying had killed Kitching. The election appeared on a knife edge; a loss would have price Labor the period. It appears affordable to consider that inside Labor, such behaviour, no matter its motives, was the final straw.
The explanations for Kitching’s dumping are at the moment being aired within the Linda Reynolds-Brittany Higgins defamation trial. Kitching, nicknamed “Mata Hari” by different Labor members, had leaked to Reynolds that the Albanese crew could be utilizing Higgins’ accusation of rape and cover-up as a political weapon. It appears affordable to imagine right here that Kitching was appearing much less out of a noble disdain for politics than a want to break the Albanese management, with a view to being sufficient of a risk to get her Senate seat again — or to see Labor lose the election.
Look, it’s all extra sophisticated than that, and I’ve overlooked a complete inside loop for readability. (This may get me yelled at by Labor tragics “Hey you set the United Frittlers within the Potrzebie Left! Hah not for the reason that amalgamation with the Eschatologists, they’re not!’) However it seems just like the HSU/HWU department may lastly be held to account. Asmar will get reward from some for cleansing up the very worst excesses of the earlier regime. However you by no means know whether or not issues like which can be true, or only a factional line.
The distinction between the accusations levelled on the CFMEU and the HWU is that the CFMEU fights for its members, and thus 1000’s of constructing staff have gotten homes, funding flats, tremendous and college funds for his or her children from getting a share of the Melbourne constructing increase. If the precise had run the entire sector, they might have gotten bupkis. It could stay a financially precarious occupation, and it might be accepted that was “pure”, as it’s for the shelf-stackers and 7-Eleven staff “represented” by the SDA.
The HWU has taken its low-paid, low-power, usually non-English-speaking members for a trip for many years. And the ACTU has allow them to. We’ll watch with curiosity because the Asmar accusations play out. As we did whereas the member for Kororoit sailed the ocean waves, sending out Instagrams of herself which recommended she was in Kororoit in Melbourne’s West when she was on her rented yacht known as — what else? — Silver Dream.
And because the former MC of all of it, Dan Andrews goes on to his subsequent thrilling journey. The place will the newly enthusiastic Zionist go? My guess is that Dan, this sq. peg, will discover a well-remunerated slot someplace within the start-up sector.
Daintree has come to Maribyrnong? Is all to play for?
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