When a union boss was accused of disparaging domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, Anthony Albanese was decisive.
He immediately condemned John Setka and moved to have him expelled from the Labor Party. That will officially happen when the national executive meets on July 5.
“John Setka does not belong in our party because of the views that he holds,” Mr Albanese said, clearly believing the issue was clear-cut.
“Rosie Batty is a great campaigner against family violence, and the idea that she should be denigrated by someone like John Setka is completely unacceptable to me as leader of the Australian Labor Party and I don’t want him in our party. It’s that simple.”
But the situation wasn’t nearly as simple as Mr Albanese imagined.
In the days since that press conference, Mr Setka has remained defiant, the union movement has split down the middle, and doubt has been cast on just how bad Mr Setka’s comments were.
It has turned into a nightmare for Mr Albanese — one he created himself in his haste to do the right thing.
Mr Setka is the Victorian secretary of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), which falls under the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).
RELATED: Setka threatens to withdraw funding from Labor
In Sally McManus, the head of the ACTU, Mr Albanese has found an ally. After meeting with Mr Setka last week, Ms McManus told him to resign.
But while sharing Mr Albanese’s goal, Ms McManus also undermined his initial rationale for ejecting Mr Setka from the Labor Party.
She publicly backed Mr Setka’s claim that he did not disparage Ms Batty (Ms McManus was at the meeting in question), saying her call for him to step down was “unrelated to Rosie” and instead based on “a whole range of issues”.
Other union leaders have also reinforced Mr Setka’s account, which is that his comments were taken out of context and were not meant as criticism of Ms Batty.
So in recent days, Mr Albanese has shifted his emphasis away from the alleged comments about Ms Batty and towards Mr Setka’s other conduct.
On Monday he told Sky News Mr Setka had long been making headlines “for all the wrong reasons”.
“He gave a speech at a rally in Melbourne where he spoke about knowing where people live, and people won’t be able to go to their local sporting clubs and their local activities. It essentially was an attempt at intimidation,” Mr Albanese said.
“He used his kids to send a very frank message to the ABCC (Australian Building and Construction Commission),” he added.
That last part was a reference to a photo Mr Setka posted online last September, which featured his son and daughter holding a sign that read: “GO GET FU#KED.”
“Message to McBurney & ABCC: ‘LEAVE OUR DADS ALONE AND GO CATCH REAL CRIMINALS YOU COWARDS!!” he wrote in the accompanying tweet.
Mr Setka eventually deleted the photo and apologised after suffering a swift backlash, but not before Prime Minister Scott Morrison pounced on it and labelled the CFMEU “a bunch of thugs”.
RELATED: Photo of children with vulgar sign sparks fury
There have been other ugly incidents in Mr Setka’s past.
In 2003 he was fined for threatening a construction company manager, telling him “I’ll get you” and “I’ll fix you up”.
In 2012 he was fined again after punching the windscreen of a van being driven by another manager. He told the man he hoped he would die of cancer.
And just last year, he infamously labelled former prime minister Kevin Rudd a “f***ing dog” and “a maggot”.
Then there is his current court case. Mr Setka is facing charges regarding the alleged harassment of a woman with intimidating text messages, and has signalled his intention to plead guilty to two charges.
All of these things would be perfectly valid reasons to expel Mr Setka from the Labor Party. But none of them are new. The ACTU and the Labor Party have both been well aware of Mr Setka’s behaviour for years, and neither has tried to get rid of him.
So while Mr Albanese cited the union boss’s long history of controversy at his initial press conference, the catalyst for his decision was obviously Mr Setka’s alleged comments about Ms Batty.
“These comments are completely incompatible with the values of the Labor Party and the broader Labor movement,” he said at the time.
“The party that I lead stands against the scourge of family violence and strongly supports Ms Batty’s campaigning on this important issue.”
Now that his main rationale for expelling Mr Setka looks shaky, Mr Albanese is in an increasingly awkward position.
More than a dozen unions have lined up behind Ms McManus’s position on Mr Setka, but others are resisting, and threatening Labor politically.
Yesterday the secretary of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), Troy Gray, said he would audit federal and Victorian Labor MPs to “make sure they’re clean” if they want to be “judge and jury” for Mr Setka.
“If people are going to try and do a political hatchet job on a union official then we will be looking to see if people have skeletons in their closet,” Mr Gray told The Australian.
“If people are going to demand a certain benchmark or standard where people should resign then let’s make sure all these Labor MPs meet that standard as well.
“If sending a text message is the standard for resignation then there definitely will be some nervous politicians out there because we will audit them.”
The other threat is financial. The ETU and Mr Setka’s Victorian branch of the CFMEU have both threatened to stop millions of dollars in donations to Labor. In fact, Mr Setka claims that is why he was targeted in the first place.
Mr Albanese has no choice but to stand firm. Caving would mean humiliation. And he is using the threats to further bolster his case against Mr Setka.
“I don’t respond to threats, Chris, it’s as simple as that,” he told 2GB radio host Chris Smith yesterday.
“I think the fact that threats are made perhaps reinforces the fact that there’s a problem. If people think that’s the way to engage then I think it says more about the people making the threats than those receiving them.
“I make no apology for ensuring that the Labor Party and its interests are put before the interests of any individual.”
The longer this mess continues, the worse it becomes for Mr Albanese’s own individual interests. It’s probably not the way he wanted to spend his early weeks as leader.
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