‘Got to stand your ground': Ex-bikie blasts former CFMEU bosses

The Age

2 days ago

When feared ex-bikie enforcer Jonny 'Two Guns' Walker discovered himself suddenly persona non grata among the union bosses he once called 'brother', one word sprang to mind. Betrayal.
The way the convicted criminal and champion boxer saw it, CFMEU chiefs previously eager to bestow the union's industrial might on hard gangland types like him were now sacrificing them to save their own skins.
Adding insult to injury was the posturing of outgoing union bosses like John Setka, who posted photos getting a bikie-style tattoo around his neck after abandoning his post as Victorian secretary.
Setka quit on the eve of the Building Bad investigation breaking – which exposed underworld infiltration of the union – hoping his departure would suppress the scandal.
'I would say he's try-hard,' Walker says of Setka.
'The tattoo's probably a bit much, isn't it? When you're stepping away? It's like leaving a biker club and getting a tattoo on the next day. Doesn't make much sense.'
If Setka hoped to rule from afar while working on as industry consultant, he failed miserably.
His acolytes in the CFMEU's executive ranks were sacked around the country and the union plunged into administration. Walker's beef is with the way these now ex-union bosses turned on men like him.
Having placed Walker, alongside other former and serving bikie bosses, in positions of union power and influence on the biggest commercial construction and Allan government projects in Victoria, he says they were owed a measure of support.
'Obviously, the pressure got too much,' says Walker. 'End of the day, we shouldn't be pushed over because the government thinks I shouldn't be on a Big Build job. It was just a witch hunt … to break down a powerful union.'
Walker, who was jailed for manslaughter over a fatal bashing in a bikie clubhouse, derides these now ex-union bosses as plastic gangsters.
'Do they think they're gangsters? Maybe at home after they've watched The Godfather or something a couple of times,' he says.
Where Walker and some of the exiled union bosses may agree is the insistence that men of his ilk can rightly work as CFMEU health and safety representatives or organisers.
Walker insists that after serving his eight years' jail — for his role in a bashing that began over a dispute over a dog called 'Trouble' — and severing ties with the Bandidos, for whom he served as club enforcer or sergeant-at-arms, his background as a tradesman and passion for unionism and upholding building industry safety made him an ideal CFMEU workplace health delegate.
'I understand people can raise eyebrows, but my knowledge of the construction site was much more than just bashing someone to death in the clubhouse,' he says.
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'I was never hired because I was an ex-Bandido. I was never hired because I was an ex-boxer. I was hired off a resume as a fitter and turner by trade.
'I'd worked since I was 14 to 30 years old, ended up in trouble, ended up in jail. But the truth is, I'd done all my courses, OH&S courses.'
It's true Walker can be charming when he tries. He stresses he's now a family man who cares for his teenage son and the two young children of his new partner, Jess.
Workers and bosses on the Big Build Hurstbridge Rail Upgrade project where Walker worked as a union delegate also say he never threatened them with violence or asked for a bribe.
And yet if Walker is anything, it's scary. It's not just his past or unflinching disposition. He oozes menace. His Two Guns nickname comes from his boxing career where he has fought more than 100 rounds.
Before his exclusive interview with this masthead and 60 Minutes, Walker had repeatedly taken to social media to call this reporter a 'dog'.
When Walker was identified on national television as one of a host of ex and serving bikies, including Bandidos, Rebels, Mongols, and Hells Angels, who had been parachuted by the CFMEU into powerful well-paid delegate roles, he posted an Instagram threat of violence directed towards me.
In the interview, Walker insisted this was justified because the public scrutiny was unjust – especially claims by the CFMEU administration's chief investigator, Geoffrey Watson, SC, that Walker, and other ex and serving bikies, were recruited by union bosses as muscle and as tools for warring CFMEU factions.
'You got on national TV with Geoffrey Watson, ran my name into the mud,' he said. 'So I run my life a little bit like a union. I stand up for what's right, so anyone gets on TV and you know, puts me down. You know what I mean? That's, at the time, that's how I felt.'
Pushed about whether his criminal record of extreme violence should have ruled him out as a union health and safety representative on a government project, Walker responds: 'Well, if you were a boss, would you do things unsafe if I come told you not to?'
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Asked about whether it was appropriate for a violent and erratic criminal linked to the Rebels to be given a job on the Big Build (this particular bikie figure got his job because his uncle held a senior union position), Walker says: 'Well, that bloke there worked alongside me and he was damn good. He's done his job to exactly how he had to do it.'
Walker was, by all accounts (this masthead spoke to eight Hurstbridge project workers about Walker on the condition of anonymity) the nicest of a three-man roving CFMEU delegate team on the project.
If Walker is reformed, his other two health and safety representatives are not.
Before they, too, were sacked, one was juggling his union duties with his role as a bikie-gang affiliated standover man accused of threatening subcontractors and others with violence.
The third CFMEU delegate on the Hurstbridge Line Project was pushed out of the union for allegedly bashing a fellow union delegate with a metal pipe.
Walker will not say an ill word about these two former comrades. Asked about the alleged bashing, Walker points out it did not happen on a work site, before querying whether it happened at all (the assault is allegedly caught on CCTV).
Pressed about whether violence should be condemned wherever it occurs, Walker offers this: 'Well, if someone breaks into my house, they're gonna get, they're gonna get a rude awakening, aren't they?'
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In contrast with Watson, Walker sees no pattern in the influx of bikie gang-linked figures into the union. Instead, he sees hard men with an ability to hold unreasonable bosses to account and protect workers.
'You don't need an ex-biker or an ex-boxer there. You need a man that's gonna stand on his own two feet and know right from wrong,' he says.
Walker stands largely alone in his defence of ex-gangland figures being appointed as union delegates.
Even his strongest supporters in the union privately say that while Walker may well be genuinely committed to reform, and also made strides in promoting a program for young offenders on the Big Build, the union ultimately set him up to fail by giving him a job as a health and safety delegate.
'They should have put him on the tools for a few years. Maybe then you look at a delegate's role,' says one experienced union insider.
'But the [now sacked union] bosses didn't want Walker and the other boys [ex-bikies] as genuine delegates. They wanted to build crews of tough guys for their own powerbases and no one thought about what would happen if anyone started asking questions.'
What happened next is now part of Australian industrial and political history, albeit one that is still being written.
Walker was not only forced off the Big Build but then from a non-union role secured for him by the Australian Workers Union on a major wind farm project.
The construction industry is undergoing once-in-a-generation reform. The state government last year introduced laws it said would prevent bikies from working on its sites.
Federal and state police are investigating organised crime links to the CFMEU and wider building sector, but it's unclear if authorities have the capacity to confront the problems, as highlighted by a spate of recent unsolved firebombings.
The union's administrator, Mark Irving, is attempting to rebuild a new corruption-free industrial force, but it's slow work that is being constantly undermined by forces inside and out of the CFMEU.
While Setka and his senior union cronies are gone from their jobs, they are still wielding influence from the sidelines.
This masthead and 60 Minutes has confirmed that several influential union organisers who played a role in recruiting bikies still work for Irving.
They include Paul Tzimas, a previous promoter of certain Mongols bikie heavies.
Tzimas didn't comment when contacted and it's unclear if he was merely following orders from others when he pushed bikie gang-linked figures onto companies.
If Walker remains a lone public voice defending the appointment of men like him to union delegate roles, he is one of many, from the premier down, now denouncing the conduct of the ex-union chiefs who put them there in the first place.
These critics may not agree on much, save for the view that whatever political and factional machinations were at play, it was the self-interest and ego of ex-CFMEU leaders that poisoned a once proud and powerful union.
'I think they betrayed themself,' Walker says. 'They were definitely more worried about themselves than us.'