🧨 The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Bribery. Hidden cameras. Rolled-up hundreds passed under the table.
Welcome to another day in Australia’s most dysfunctional power club.
This week’s exposé from The Australian Financial Review is a reminder, or perhaps just confirmation, of how deep the rot goes inside some corners of the union movement.
“Let’s make some money together.”
- Michael Greenfield, former NSW secretary of the CFMEU, to a building company owner, before pocketing the first of six cash bribes.
Over three years, Darren and Michael Greenfield, once rising stars in the CFMEU, accepted $30,000 in dirty money. In exchange? Preferential treatment on building sites.
All this happening inside the Sydney CFMEU office, caught on hidden cameras installed by the building company owner.
Think foot taps under the table, hush-hush cash drops, and a game that only worked because everyone at that table knew the rules.
The fallout?
The Victorian branch of the CFMEU was placed under independent administration.
The ACTU suspended affiliations with the CFMEU’s construction division.
State Labor branches have started distancing themselves.
Yet, anyone who’s worked on the inside knows this isn’t a one-off. It’s a symptom of a deeper pathology: a culture that rewards silence, protects predators, and punishes dissent. You’re only safe if you’re useful. You’re only believed if you’re in the inner circle.
This isn’t about one union, or two corrupt “brothers.”
This is about what happens when solidarity becomes complicity.
The real cost isn’t just $30,000 in bribes. It’s trust. It’s the credibility of worker-led movements. It’s every whistleblower who was ignored, every honest delegate who was sidelined, and every rank-and-filer who dared to ask questions and was met with silence, or worse.
The reckoning is long overdue. And it starts with naming the rot.
🧵 Link to the article: AFR – “Let’s make some money together”
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