Labor rakes in $2m from union backers

QUEENSLAND Labor has raked in more than $2 million in union funding and held hundreds of meetings with union bosses since its shock 2015 election win, triggering claims of undue influence over policy.

The $2.087 million in union funds that has flowed into Labor Party coffers since July 2015 was on top of $1.9 million in financial support directly before and after Labor’s LNP election upset.

Funding includes cash donations, in-kind support and union affiliation fees.

Analysis of Labor’s Electoral Commission of Queensland donation disclosures show the biggest single union donor was the left-aligned United Voice.

Its state secretary, Labor powerbroker Gary Bullock, was a chief negotiator for Labor’s dominant left faction in influencing the make-up of the Cabinet in 2015.

The party has pocketed almost $600,000 from the union since July 2015, including “inkind” support valued by the union at a whopping $175,000 in June last year.

It is followed by hefty donations from the Australian Workers’ Union, Communication Electrical Plumbing Union, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Branches of the militant left-aligned Construction Forestry Mining & Energy gave funding totalling about $155,000 in the same period.

CFMEU officials have secured 58 meetings with Palaszczuk Government cabinet ministers since Labor came to power, analysis of Government ministerial diaries reveal. They were among the 468 meetings between Labor ministers and individual unions.

The Together Union, representing workers in a range of sectors, topped the list with 86 meetings.

State Opposition industrial relations spokesman Jarrod Bleijie has accused the Government of being run by the unions, citing a series of unionbacked reforms.

He also slammed Ms Palaszczuk for quickly supporting a recommendation by the Crime and Corruption Commission to ban developer donations, but ruling out extending that to union donations.

A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk responded to questions by pointing to the Government’s transparency reforms, including restoring the $1000 donation declaration threshold and introducing electronic “real-time” donation disclosures.

ALP state secretary Evan Moorhead rejected union donations were a problem. He referred to a section of the CCC report ruling out the need for a wider donations ban “until such time as unions and other types of donors demonstrate the same risk of actual or perceived corruption in Queensland local government as property developers.”

CFMEU-backed Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller said the same accusations of bias could be said of LNP ties to employer groups.