Leaked messages reveal Labor women who backed CFMEU leader John Setka after calling wife ‘a dog’

Leaked text messages have revealed the messages of support that senior Labor women offered to CFMEU leader John Setka after he faced domestic violence charges for texting his estranged partner to call her “sh*t” and a “fu**en dog.”

At the same time as Liberal leader Peter Dutton warns Australia’s rogue union the CFMEU is “corrupt to the core”, rubbishing suggestions that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese didn’t know it had links to bikies and criminals, evidence has emerged of the strong support Mr Sekta received from female Labor figures as he fought domestic violence charges.

After it emerged in January, 2019 that Mr Sekta had been charged over an incident at home on Boxing Day, Victorian Labor figure Bronwyn Halfpenny texted him to say she was “thinking of you and hope everything will be OK.”

“You are a great comrade to working people,’’ she said.

The texts were revealed by the Nine newspapers on Friday as part of an ongoing investigation into the power and influence of the union.

In 2019, Setka, 54, pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to charges of breaching a court order and one other matter.

Outside court, his wife Emma Walters identified herself as his victim. Her husband was accused of calling her 25 times and sending 45 text messages in October last year.

He was also accused of sending a tirade of abusive messages between December to January.

“You are a c*** just like the rest of your family,” one of the messages read.

Another said, “you are a treacherous Aussie f***in c***”.

Victorian Labor MP Luba Grigorovitch, who was then the RBTU secretary, put out a statement in June, 2019 praising his “strong record of standing up for working people.”

“He deserves his day in court,’’ she said.

Tanja Kovac, the national co-convener of Emily’s List, an organisation devoted to promoting more women to winnable seats, also offered support and advice.

“Be strong, genuine and sorry and the leader I know you are. Thinking of you,’’ she wrote in June, 2019.

The Liberal leader Peter Dutton has put the clean up of the union front-and-centre to his re-election hopes pledging to deregister the union if he wins office and re-establishing a construction industry watchdog.

But the Prime Minister has insisted that deregistering the union is not the answer, suggesting it could mean less control over the union, not more.

As the Labor Party moves to distance itself from the construction union, former Labor leader Bill Shorten claims the alleged conduct uncovered is a “betrayal of construction workers and all of the many millions of Australians who belong to unions and thousands of union reps who are honest and do the right thing.”

“Oh, we’ve said that we’re suspending all donations from the CFMEU. In fact, we’ve suspended the CFMEU from the Labor Party,’’ he said.

But asked if Labor would pay donations back on breakfast television, he insisted that the last donations were over two years ago.

“We’ve taken the action to stop any financial relations with the CFMEU,’’ Mr Shorten said.

“We want to be really clear here. I don’t believe this is how most trade unions operate, but there is a problem in the CFMEU and that can only be sorted out by having an independent administrator investigate all the proceedings that are going on there.”

Mr Dutton said if elected he pledged to reintroduce legislation for the building construction watchdog.

“When we go back to Parliament in August, we hope the government can support it because they abolished it at the request of the CFMEU,’’ he said.

“$10 million has been donated by the CFMEU to the Labor Party. That’s you know, it’s a corrupt organisation. It’s corrupt to the core.

“And that Bill Shorten and Tony Burke and Anthony Albanese are running around saying, you know, we didn’t know anything about this. We didn’t know the bikies had infiltrated the CFMEU It’s a complete nonsense. It’s not believable.”