CFMEU withdraws support for Queensland Labor's left
Queensland's powerful construction union has quit the left faction of the state Labor party, citing a "leadership vacuum" and a focus on internal matters just two months out from the October state election.
CFMEU construction division secretary Michael Ravbar announced the move to distance the union from party factions, "effective immediately", in a statement on Wednesday morning.
CFMEU Protesters outside Queensland Parliament House in 2019.
"While the CFMEU will remain affiliated with the ALP, the union will be a more potent force free of any formal factional links," he said. "Our only factional alignment is with the interests of our members."
Mr Ravbar said the "so-called" left faction's leadership had devoted more time to internal matters than driving a policy platform for "both socially and economically progressive values".
"The leadership vacuum in the left has seen a once powerful voice for working Queenslanders atrophy to the point where today it is little more than a creche for party hacks," he added.
"In the process, the faction has become little more a protection racket for dud members such as Jackie Trad, who as former Deputy Premier bears much of the blame for the failure to look after workers' interests even on major public projects such as Cross River Rail."
The construction union launched a targeted advertising campaign against CRR minister Kate Jones in June, with full-page advertisements attacking Ms Jones taken out in newspapers and hundreds of homes in her inner-west seat of Cooper letterboxed.
This was only the latest part of long-running tension between the state Labor government, the union and the contractor chosen to construct the $5.4 billion project.
The CFMEU pulled support for the Labor party ahead of the 2012 election, when Anna Bligh and her government were decimated at the polls and retained just seven seats in Parliament.
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