Setka charged with harassing a CFMEU administrator

Disgraced former union boss John Setka faces fresh criminal charges over allegations he issued a Christmas Day threat to an official from the Albanese government-backed administration that seized control of the CFMEU in 2024.

Police arrested the 61-year-old in Footscray on Wednesday morning, and he will face court over the charges in early June.

Setka has also been charged by Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk, which is investigating allegations of criminal behaviour linked to the construction industry, for allegedly committing offences while on bail.

Separately, Setka has been questioned over domestic abuse allegations after taking a car, which he says he owns, from a shopping centre car park.

The former CFMEU boss said he did not threaten anyone in the messages he sent on Christmas Day last year, telling this masthead: “People should just toughen up and drink a bit of concrete and harden up a bit … It is the building industry.”

He said CFMEU staff were behaving like “rose petals”, and claimed the prosecution against him was politically driven.

Asked what he had said in the messages, Setka said he had written: “I hope you have a shit Christmas, because you are a bunch of sellout dogs.”

He said there was no menace in the comment as he was just expressing his opinion. “We’re not a communist country,” he said.

At the time of his arrest on Wednesday, he was already facing a series of charges laid by Taskforce Hawk in November.

Those charges relate to allegations Setka used a carriage service to menace or harass administration officials, including corruption-busting lawyer Geoffrey Watson, SC.

In a report published this month, Watson accused Victoria’s Labor government of turning a blind eye to CFMEU corruption and organised crime on infrastructure projects at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $15 billion. These claims prompted fierce backlash from the government.

Police established Operation Hawk in mid-2024, in response to this masthead’s Building Bad series, which exposed criminal behaviour and corruption in the CFMEU.

The operation became Taskforce Hawk in 2025 in response to fresh allegations of serious and violent criminal behaviour, also first reported by this masthead.

Setka confirmed he had been questioned by police about the incident involving the car but denied there was any issue of domestic abuse.

He said the “super-charged V8 car” was being driven by “someone who shouldn’t have been driving it and it is a very expensive car”, and when he came across it at the shopping centre he used his own keys to drive it away.

He said the car was then reported stolen, but he later told police that he owned it and was paying insurance for it.

“If I repossess my own car, that’s not car theft,” he said.

Asked if he would take action against the driver, he said he would not as that was a “personal, family matter” and he did not believe the police would be looking into his actions any further.

The CFMEU declined to comment.

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