Australia news LIVE: Coalition calls on Labor to deregister CFMEU; Trump to meet Putin to discuss war in Ukraine

Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt has hit back at the Coalition’s call to deregister the CFMEU, describing the move as a “reckless plan” that would “hand control of the union back to the very criminals we are beginning to remove”.

Earlier today, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton again demanded the construction union be deregistered following another investigation by this masthead that revealed more allegations of misconduct among CFMEU officials.

Watt announced today that he would refer allegations of criminality by CFMEU members to federal police after a bikie-linked man was caught on camera assaulting a woman while on his lunchbreak at a state-funded construction project.

But in a social media post about 2pm, the employment minister pushed back against the Coalition’s proposals for the construction union, arguing they would be counterproductive.

“Peter Dutton’s reckless plan for the CFMEU would hand control of the union back to the very criminals we are beginning to remove. Deregistering the union would allow it to operate without ANY regulation, with the worst elements free to run rampant on construction sites again,” he said.

Watt said the Coalition’s plan would end the CFMEU’s current administration under Mark Irving, KC, which was intended to weed out corruption and criminality. He also suggested the Coalition’s plan to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) was flawed, claiming the regulator that Labor abolished merely “prosecuted workers for having union stickers on their helmets” and allowed construction union misconduct to take hold.

Loading

“Now the administrator is beginning to clean up the union, and police have established active operations with state police forces and are conducting raids, Peter Dutton wants to recklessly close it all down,” Watt said.

“We don’t need to import an American racketeering law – we already have our own laws to go after ‘kingpins’, such as section 390.6 of the Criminal Code, which already deals with directing criminal organisation.

“Peter Dutton’s reckless desire for a headline puts at risk the investigations and crime-fighting that the Coalition never bothered to commence in their decade in office.”