🤔 Behind the Banner

What the CFMEU Investigation Tells Us About Power, Coercion, and Silenced Resistance

“Exposed: CFMEU’s culture of coercion as resistance crushed”

- The Courier-Mail, 9 July 2025

This was the headline that flashed across my screen on yesterday morning. A breaking news alert. A bombshell, they called it.

But for some of us, this wasn’t breaking news.

It was déjà vu.

The Courier-Mail’s investigation into the Queensland branch of the CFMEU confirmed what too many women, whistleblowers, and rank-and-file members have already lived: intimidation, coercion, and targeted abuse are not fringe issues. They are part of a pattern, and one that those in power have allowed to fester for decades.

“A landmark investigation… reveals its use of violence, coercion and threatened abuse – including against women.”

That final clause - “including against women” - is doing a lot of work.

Too much, in fact.

It reads like an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be.

Because abuse of power is never gender-neutral.

Because resistance is almost always punished harder when it comes from a woman.

This wasn’t breaking news. It was confirmation.

The Courier-Mail’s headline exposed a union culture steeped in coercion, violence, and gendered abuse. But for some of us, these truths weren’t revelations - they were lived experiences.

So why is it only making headlines now?

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Join us in The Reckoning Room to uncover the patterns behind the headlines, and what they mean for those of us who’ve lived them.