John Setka Faces Penalties for Breaking Workplace Laws
John Setka has never been one to apologise. He wasn’t about to start in the Federal Court.
The former Victorian CFMEU strongman has admitted breaking workplace laws by trying to force the AFL to sack its head of umpiring, Stephen McBurney – the same man who, as Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, helped haul the union through more than 50 court cases in five years.
Setka now faces a personal fine of up to $18,730. The sting could be far sharper: the union he once dominated has refused to indemnify his legal costs, leaving him potentially exposed to a hefty bill of his own.
He didn’t show up to court on Friday. His barrister, Margo Harris, did the talking.
“Not a deliberate campaign,” court told
The court heard that in mid-2024, while still CFMEU Victorian secretary, Setka launched a two-week barrage of public threats aimed squarely at the AFL and McBurney.
On social media, at press conferences, and in interviews, he warned that CFMEU members would disrupt or delay AFL-related building projects unless the league dumped McBurney.
“This is going to cost the AFL a lot of f**king money. I hope it's worth it,” he said in one outburst.
“Projects without our full co-operation are going to be a f**king misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.”
The Fair Work Ombudsman argued those threats were unlawful coercion because they were made in response to McBurney’s lawful work as ABCC commissioner.
On Friday, barristers for both Setka and the CFMEU admitted to breaching the Fair Work Act.
Harris urged Justice John Snaden not to impose a heavy penalty on her client. She said Setka is now retired, in the middle of a divorce, and spends most of his time caring for his elderly mother.
She also pushed back at the characterisation of his behaviour as a calculated public crusade.
There was no evidence, she said, that Setka “actively sought” media attention, even though he spoke to newspapers and appeared on radio and television calling for McBurney’s removal.
Harris told the court Setka did not “deliberately” wage a media campaign against McBurney, prompting Justice Snaden to press her on what that meant.
“When I say deliberate, there's a range of deliberateness. It's not a question of being pregnant or not pregnant,” she replied.
“It comes in the stream of the interview. There's a question asked of him, he answers it.”
The suggestion was clear: this was more rolling commentary than orchestrated offensive.
FWO: “No question this is a media campaign”
The Fair Work Ombudsman saw it very differently.
FWO barrister Marc Felman said nobody forced Setka to hold press conferences or front microphones.
“There can be no question that this is a media campaign,” he told the court.
The language Setka used left little doubt about his feelings toward McBurney.
At one press conference, he branded the former ABCC chief: “He's a zealot. He hates unions. He hates workers in general.”
He also shared a social media image of McBurney mocked up in a “(Not) Wanted Dead or Alive” poster.
Felman told the court the breaches were “very, very serious”. Calling for an AFL figure to be sacked is not new in football, he said, but this case crossed the legal line because the demands were linked directly to McBurney’s previous, lawful role enforcing building laws.
McBurney, a four-time AFL grand final umpire, kept the AFL’s backing throughout the storm and remains the league’s head of officiating.
CFMEU pleads new culture as fines loom
The timing of the case is politically sharp. It lands just three days before public hearings begin at Victoria’s Royal Commission into the state government’s “Big Build” projects, already shadowed by allegations of corruption and criminal infiltration.
Setka, who quit the CFMEU weeks after his tirades against McBurney, also faces separate criminal charges over alleged harassment of the union’s administrators.
The union itself is in the gun alongside him. The CFMEU, now under administration, could be fined up to $93,900.
Barrister Andrew White, representing the union, urged the court to temper any penalty, arguing that the CFMEU of the Setka era is not the CFMEU of today.
Breaking the law was no longer viewed as “the cost of doing business”, he said. He pointed to a sweeping clean-out: hundreds of officials associated with Setka’s time in charge had either been removed or left.
“A new culture of lawful but robust unionism is taking hold,” White told the court, framing the case as a relic of a past regime rather than a snapshot of the present.
Justice Snaden will hand down penalties for both Setka and the CFMEU at a later date.
When he does, the judgment will not just price one man’s defiance – it will test how much the courts believe in the union’s promised new era.
