Peter Lyndon-James

Helping you find TRUTH. Cold hard facts. 100% truth. No Misinformation. “Corrected when Wrong”.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

9 — THE YEAR THEY TURNED

Something happened inside the union movement last year that almost nobody outside it noticed.

When the Commonwealth put the CFMEU into administration in August 2024, the Building Industry Group of Unions, of which the CEPU is a member, went public with what they called "outrage" at the administration legislation.

That letter still sits on the plumbers union's own website.

Watch what the money did next. In the same financial year, the CEPU's Electrical Division paid the Australian Greens $600,000. The largest payment any union has ever made to the Greens. Double the previous record. The figure is confirmed on two independent AEC return types, the Greens' party return and the CEPU's donor return, matching to the dollar.

Now the plumbing side.

On the CEPU Plumbing Division Victorian Branch's own audited accounts for the year to 31 March 2025, the year spanning the same administration, political-party donations were $219,080, up from $2,000 the year before.

A hundred-fold jump in the run-up to the federal election.

The line has to stay honest. CEPU-family money still reached Labor that year, the CEPU Electrical Division's own donor return records total donations made of $1,563,800, and after the Greens $600,000 the residual $963,800 shows on the AEC recipient side as Labor payments and other minor lines.

A separate $500,000 donation from the plumbers union direct to federal Labor. Annual returns don't carry payment dates. I can't tell you whether the Labor money moved before or after the movement's public opposition to the administration, and neither can anyone reading the public record.

That's a gap in the disclosure system itself.

Steelman. The record does not support any characterisation of the $600,000 as tied to the CFMEU administration by cause and effect. Timing within the year cannot be pinned from AEC data. Election-year donation jumps are ordinary.

Do not read past the record.

Which is this. The unions that were never banned, never administered, never touched, in the same year they publicly opposed the administration, their electrical division bankrolled the Greens at a level never seen before, and their plumbing branch's political donations went from four figures to six.

When a union family can shift record payments in the year it publicly opposes a government it once funded, every party takes note.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
Australian Greens Political Party Return 2024-25, AEC Transparency Register — CEPU Electrical Division $600,000. CEPU EES Donor Return 2024-25 — total donations made $1,563,800 (residual after Greens: $963,800). AEC Detailed Receipts 2024-25 — PPTEU $500,000 direct to federal Labor. Plumbing and Pipe Trades Employees Union website (https://t.co/OVWjI39Yfj) — Building Industry Group of Unions statement on administration legislation. CEPU Plumbing Division Victorian Branch Financial Report FR2025/12, filed with Fair Work Commission, s.255 expenditure report — political-party donations $219,080 (FY24: $2,000).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

8 — THE PIPELINE IS INVISIBLE BY DESIGN

Here's a run I did across the AEC's associated-entity register, the register where every organisation that operates for the benefit of, or under the control of, a political party is meant to appear.

I checked every fund I've written about this week.

Incolink. Redundancy Payment Central Fund. Protect. All the Protect entities. BERT. BEWT. CIPQ. JetCo. Plumbing Joint Training Fund. PICAC. Elecnet. QCTF. BUSSQ. Not one is on the register.

Not one owes the AEC anything.

These are the entities that paid the union movement about $57 million in 2024-25 on the unions' own returns. And the movement, in the same year, paid Labor $15.68 million, paid the Greens $650,000, and spent $17.99 million on direct electoral campaigns.

You saw the pipeline this week only because the unions receiving the money are Significant Third Parties who must report their receipts.

The payers themselves owe no report at all.

Now the harder same-standard point, because it makes the finding worse, not better. Every one of these funds has TWO sponsors, a union AND an employer association. NECA got Protect surpluses alongside the ETU. Master Builders Queensland is on the BERT board. BEWT distributes to both sides.

The employer share of every one of these distributions is invisible for the same reason, employer associations are not disclosure entities to the AEC.

Same money. Same fund. One side lit, one side dark.

Here's the fair other side. The Electoral Act defines an associated entity as one operating for the benefit of, or under the control of, a party.

These funds are joint employer-union bodies, arguably they meet neither test. They're not evading a rule. That's the finding. The rule is written so it never applies to them.

Billions of dollars of workers' entitlement money, held by entities that pay both unions and employer associations, outside the disclosure regime entirely, lawfully, because the legal form was designed that way.

Same principle applies on the other side of politics. Boundless Earth, Mike Cannon-Brookes' climate-advocacy operation, is a company limited by guarantee, and $55 million of its climate-policy advocacy spending is invisible to the AEC for the same structural reason. Party-neutral loophole.

If Parliament writes a definition that leaves billion-dollar political-adjacent entities outside the register, they'll build outside the register. Both sides. Because they can.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
AEC Register of Associated Entities (https://t.co/jRQa8w6cdh). AEC Detailed Receipts 2024-25 — fund → union payments totalling approximately $57 million. AEC Political Party Returns 2024-25 — unions → Labor $15.68 million; unions → Greens $650,000. AEC STP electoral expenditure 2024-25 — $17.99 million. Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, s.287H. ETU statement (Protect sponsor-distribution mechanism — surpluses to ETU AND NECA). Royal Commission material (BERT profits distributed to unions AND Queensland Major Contractors' Association). Boundless Earth structural note — company limited by guarantee, $55 million climate-policy advocacy spend outside AEC registration.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

7 — THE COMMONWEALTH IS THE UNION MOVEMENT'S BIGGEST FUNDER

Have a look at who paid the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 2024-25, the year the ACTU spent $5,425,881 running an election campaign.

Its single largest funder, on its own AEC return: the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. $10,553,125. The Department of Industry paid it another $948,750. Combined Commonwealth money into the peak union body in the election year: about $11.5 million.

That's not a one-off. DEWR paid the ACTU $6.46 million the year before. Same department. Two-year total: $17 million.

The state layer sits underneath it.

On its own AEC return, the CFMEU received $1,462,650 from the Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions in 2024-25 — while the union was under Commonwealth administration and banned from making political donations.

Now the honest side.

Commonwealth grants to the ACTU are program money, historically training, education, workplace-participation programs. They're acquitted for purpose. No line in the union's return traces a grant dollar into the campaign, and electoral expenditure is separately disclosed.

The finding isn't diversion. It's the juxtaposition.

On a single AEC return, in one financial year, a peak union body reports its single largest funder is the Commonwealth department that answers to the government the body ran a $5.4 million campaign supporting.

The state line has the same shape. Training organisations get government contracts; the CFMEU operates a registered training organisation; a state government paying the union for training delivery is a lawful commercial relationship, and I haven't yet seen the FOI response identifying the purpose of the $1,462,650. I'll publish that when I do.

Same standard, both sides.

If it were a Coalition government paying an employer peak body $11 million in an election year that body ran a $5 million campaign for, you'd want to see it. The equivalent test has been run on the visible data: no large employer-association-to-Coalition pipeline of that shape appears in the AEC record.

Here it is on the other side, from the peak union body's own return.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
ACTU Significant Third Party Return 2024-25, AEC Transparency Register (DEWR $10,553,125; Department of Industry $948,750; electoral expenditure $5,425,881). ACTU Significant Third Party Return 2023-24, AEC Transparency Register (DEWR $6.46 million). CFMEU Significant Third Party Return 2024-25, AEC Transparency Register (Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions $1,462,650). Same-standard comparison: Detailed Receipts full series — no equivalent Coalition-side pipeline of that shape in the AEC record.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

6 — THE BPIC CIRCLE

Here's a policy chain that ran quietly for years. Under a Queensland Labor government, government-funded construction projects over $100 million were subject to "Best Practice Industry Conditions", BPIC. Where BPIC applied, it had to form a mandatory evaluation criterion in the tender, and the commitments became part of the contract.

The BPIC documents name the funds.

Employer redundancy contributions for CFMEU and CEPU members were required to be made to BEWT. Contributions to BERT, CIPQ and BEWT were required for casual employees. For ETU members, JetCo. These aren't private trade documents, they're on the Queensland Government's own websites for Housing and Public Works, and Transport and Main Roads.

Follow the money.

BEWT's audited accounts, tendered to the Commission of Inquiry, distribute its entire profit to the BERT Training Fund, $12,086,193 in the 2025 financial year alone. BERT Training Fund then paid the CFMEU $7,667,809 in 2024-25, on the union's own AEC return. And the CFMEU donated to Labor, $3.74 million in 2021-22 alone, $22.5 million cumulative over 27 years.

The lawful other side.

Contributions are worker entitlements, not gifts. Only fund surpluses flow onward, not entitlement principal. Funds are jointly governed with employer associations. Money is fungible, no dollar traces a fund distribution into a donation cheque. The union-to-Labor flow ceased with administration in 2024. BPIC was paused by the Crisafulli government in November 2024 and permanently removed on 1 January 2026.

Same-standard note: the equivalent test on Coalition-state procurement policies, whether they name industry-linked bodies as required beneficiaries, is a separate strand not yet run.

Result goes up the same way when it is.

That's the shape. A Labor state government's procurement policy made contributions to union-linked funds an effective condition of winning taxpayer-funded work; those funds' profits flowed to the union; the union was simultaneously the government's donor.

Every step documented on a government website or an audited financial statement. Circularity, on the record. The Queensland Productivity Commission projected BPIC would cost taxpayers up to $20.6 billion over five years.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
Queensland Government Best Practice Industry Conditions guide (https://t.co/NQ4etXFH76); Transport BPIC (https://t.co/8HVmmZKryh); Standard BPIC (https://t.co/8oeyL1m6u3). BEWT audited accounts tendered to Queensland Commission of Inquiry, exhibit FM-2 Part 4. AEC Transparency Register 2024-25 — BERT Training Fund → CFMEU $7,667,809. AEC Detailed Receipts — CFMEU → Labor $3.74M (2021-22); $22.5M cumulative 1998-99 to 2024-25. Queensland Procurement Policy 2026 (permanent removal 1 January 2026); Crisafulli Government BPIC pause announcement, November 2024. Queensland Productivity Commission cost projection.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

5 — THE CHAIN RECONCILED TO THE DOLLAR

The core finding, that the BEWT → BERT → CFMEU chain runs from employer EBA contributions through to union revenue, is already on the page.

Here's a run I want to walk you through, because the strength of it is what makes the finding impossible to argue with. I took three independent audited document sets, the BEWT worker entitlement fund's own audited accounts, the BERT Training Fund's own audited accounts, and the construction unions' own AEC returns, and reconciled them line by line.

The BEWT accounts show it distributed its entire surplus to the BERT Training Fund: $12,086,193 in the 2025 financial year, $8,906,451 in 2024.

Not part of the surplus. All of it.

The BERT Training Fund's own audited accounts confirm receipt of exactly those figures. The Training Fund then paid out $10.04 million in training grants in 2025, with itemised recipient lines of $5.23 million, $1.87 million and $240,000.

Now the unions' side. In 2024-25 the BERT Training Fund → CFMEU $7,667,809, plus BERT Training Fund → CEPU $2.79 million, combined $10.5 million. That matches the Training Fund's total grant outflow, to the dollar range, in the same year.

The full chain reconciles across all three audits.

Employer contributions of $11.87 million into BEWT under enterprise agreements → BEWT surplus $12.09 million → BERT Training Fund → training grants of about $10 million → CFMEU and CEPU.

Every step. Every year.

The lawful other side. Every entity is jointly governed with employer associations. The transfers are grant distributions between related bodies for training purposes. All disclosed. All audited. No adverse finding has been made on the arrangement itself.

Governance is by design tripartite.

That's the finding. When three separate audits of three different organisations reconcile at every step to the dollar across multiple years, you're looking at a system, not a coincidence. Every dollar starts with an employer contribution paid under an enterprise agreement Australian construction workers must sign to work.

That's whose money is running the machine.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
- BEWT audited accounts, tendered to Queensland Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU (exhibit FM-2 Part 4). BERT Training Fund audited accounts, tendered to Queensland Commission of Inquiry (FTI report Part 5). AEC Transparency Register 2024-25 — BERT Training Fund → CFMEU $7,667,809; BERT Training Fund → CEPU $2.79 million.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

@LukeBesnard Thanks Luke..

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

AUSTRALIA TAKE NOTICE - THIS IS A FACT…!

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, One Nation will be a wrecking ball for Australian Politics.

Australians have had enough. We’ve watched Labor and Liberal take turns running this country into the ground for 30 years and call it democracy.

Both sides selling the farm and gutting Australia. Both sides promising the world and delivering band-aids while looking after themselves while we cop the bill.

The two party system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way it was designed to work. Protect the club, lock out the outsiders, swap the furniture around every few years and call it change.

Australians need to put every bit of weight they’ve got behind that wrecking ball. Every vote that goes to One Nation is the weight in the ball and the harder it swings, the bigger the hole it puts in the wall. That’s the only language Canberra understands.

The election starts now, not in one year, two or in three, Now. Every day we stay silent the country slides further backwards.

Watch what’s happening right now. Since the Iran war and the fuel crisis, the Liberals, the Nationals and Labor are all scrambling. All of a sudden they’re picking up policies on fuel security, sovereign capability and national resilience. Policies they ignored for decades.

Policies they mocked when they heard them, Policies that One Nation has been punching out for 30 years.

Pauline Hanson has been saying the same thing for 30 years and she hasn’t wavered once. What she said back then is exactly what’s happening now. No other party can say that, not one of them.

They bend with the polls, they flip with the headlines, they rewrite their platform every election cycle based on what focus groups tell them.

Not Pauline. She’s stood there while they laughed at her, while they hounded her, while they tried to destroy her and now 30 years later the same people who mocked her are stealing her policies and calling them their own.

That’s not policy, that’s panic.

They weren’t listening before. Now all of a sudden they’re listening because they can smell the votes walking out the door. They’re making it up as they go. Labor’s doing it, Liberal’s are doing it, Nationals are doing it, all of them scrambling to catch up to a woman who saw this coming three decades ago.

This is the moment, this is why the wrecking ball has to swing.

Swing the wrecking ball people

What’s your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

A Rule for Thee but not for Me…!

The double standard is real and documented. Here’s how it works in plain terms.

What an ordinary Australian gets jailed for

If you run a small business and route customer payments through a related shell company to lower your tax bill, that’s tax evasion, Jail.

If you accept money from a property developer who’s banned from donating in your state, that’s a criminal offence under NSW electoral law. Fines or jail.

If you take taxpayer money for one purpose and channel it back to your own private benefit, that’s misappropriation. Jail.

If you fail to declare beneficial ownership of a company you actually control, that’s an ASIC offence. Significant penalties.

If you set up complex corporate structures specifically to obscure who’s behind transactions from regulators, that’s the textbook definition of money laundering under AUSTRAC rules. Jail.

What political parties do legally

Route donations through Associated Entities so the original donor’s name doesn’t appear on the party’s return. Legal.

Take banned property developer donations through a third-party foundation that channels them to the party, ICAC found nine NSW Liberal MPs did exactly this through The Millennium Forum, with “intention of evading political donations laws.” Findings made. Nobody jailed. The same legal entity continues operating today as Bunori Pty Ltd / Federal Forum.

Take $2,500 a year from each MP’s taxpayer-funded electorate allowance, run it through a party-owned company, and have the company donate the money back to the party. Legal. Bill Shorten called it “money laundering.” Marque Lawyers called it “as brutally simple as laundering drug money through a casino.” ANAO investigation found “no financial impropriety.” Nobody charged.

Operate poker machine venues that drain $110 million a year from working Australians, register the venues as the party’s Associated Entity, and use the profits to fund the party that regulates poker machines. Legal.

Negotiate a “transparency reform” with your political opponents that exempts your own biggest funding pipeline (union affiliation fees, associated entity flows) from the new caps. Legal.

Why the system stays this way

The same political class that benefits from the structure writes the rules that govern the structure. Every reform proposal goes through the parliament. The parliament is filled with the parties that own the Associated Entities, the foundations, the data companies, and the gambling clubs. They will never voluntarily legislate themselves out of the structure that funds them.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the documented public record.

The double standard, named directly

A small businessman who structured his affairs the way the major parties structure theirs would be in court. The small businessman doesn’t get the AEC saying “we have no evidence to determine whether the disclosure was incorrect” when $47 million appears on his return for one year and disappears the next he gets audited, charged, and prosecuted.

The major parties get the benefit of a regulatory framework they wrote. Ordinary Australians get a regulatory framework they had no say in designing.

What’s your thoughts…?

Peter lyndon-James 🇦🇺

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

THE REVERSAL

A good idea sat on the shelf for eleven years. The week Labor needed a favour, it passed in under a month.

Here’s how Canberra really works.

The ban on super funds borrowing to buy homes isn’t new. The Coalition’s own inquiry recommended it back in 2014.

The financial regulators backed it in 2019 and again in 2022. For over a decade it sat there, sound enough that the experts kept recommending it, ignored by every government that could’ve acted.

Then Labor needed the Greens to pass its housing tax package.

And an eleven-year-old idea nobody would touch was suddenly law, a bill introduced in late May, through both houses by 25 June. Rushed through in under a month, on a measure that doesn’t even start until 2027.

Let me be straight about my beef here, because it’s not the tax policy. Reasonable people can argue negative gearing all day.

My problem is how it got done.

The policy might’ve been right the whole time, the regulators certainly thought so. But being right never got it passed. Being useful did. It only became law the moment it was worth something in a trade.

And the tell is the timing. The Tax Institute pointed out that urgent measures, ones that actually start this year, were left sitting, while this non-urgent one got fast-tracked. There’s only one reason to rush a law you don’t need yet: someone needed the deal now.

That’s the whole game. A thing doesn’t get done in this country because it’s right. It gets done when someone with the numbers needs something back for it.

Pass it on its merits, in the open, with the people it affects in the room. That’s all. That’s the entire ask.

None of it is illegal. That’s the problem.

What’s your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
2014 Financial System Inquiry (Murray) recommendation on SMSF borrowing; Council of Financial Regulators reviews 2019 & 2022; Chalmers citing Murray Inquiry, 23 June 2026; Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 — introduced 28 May, passed both houses 25 June, Royal Assent 26 June; Tax Institute submission to Senate Economics Legislation Committee, 10 June 2026 (accelerated timetable; urgent measures left un-legislated).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

THE TOLL

Chalmers admitted he didn’t have the numbers. So he went shopping. Here’s what one budget cost, and who paid for it.

Watch how a decision really gets made in this country.

Every step of it legal.

Labor wanted its housing tax package through, scrapping the capital gains discount, winding back negative gearing. Whatever you think of that, and there’s a real case for it, they didn’t have the Senate to pass it. Chalmers said it flat out: “nobody has the numbers on their own.”

So the Greens named their price and it wasn’t one thing. It was three.

One. A ban on self-managed super funds borrowing to buy a home.

Two. Stripping the Treasurer’s own power over the capital gains discount, locked away for good.

Three. An eight-week freeze on the entire NDIS overhaul. Nothing to do with any of it. Just parked, to seal the deal.

That’s the toll for one budget. Two permanent changes and a stalled disability reform, traded across a table in under a month.

Now here’s the part that’ll get you. The Greens sold the super ban as closing a loophole for “wealthy property investors.”

So let’s go to the Tax Office’s own numbers.

The people who use these loans hold super balances between half a million and a million dollars. Two-thirds are under fifty. It’s about one in ten self-managed funds. Not the top end of town, the sparkie, the subbie, the small-business owner trying to build something for the back half of their life.

They didn’t shut a loophole for the rich. They pulled up the ladder on the people climbing it.

And this isn’t just me. The Tax Institute, hardly a pack of firebrands , told the Senate the whole thing was rushed, with “the absence of prior consultation.” The peak body for the super sector says nobody in government even rang them.

Here’s what should’ve happened. A change to people’s retirement gets an inquiry, gets consultation, and passes because it’s right, in daylight, not overnight as the price of someone else’s votes.

None of it is illegal. That’s the problem.

What’s your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
PM’s Office statement & Chalmers doorstop 23 June 2026; Senate Hansard 25 June 2026 (bill passed 35–25; House 98–39); Accountants Daily & Mortgage Professional Australia (three-part Greens deal incl. NDIS delay); ATO SMSF Statistical Report Sept 2025 (LRBA balances, ~11% usage, under-50 data); Tax Institute submission to Senate Economics Legislation Committee, 10 June 2026; Capital Brief (SMSF Association CEO Peter Burgess not consulted); Treasury (Chalmers “less than 1%” remarks).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

@TheIPA Agree

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST F — THE MACHINE REACHES WEST

Everything I've shown you this week happened in the eastern states. So I went looking at home.

Western Australia runs a version of the same machine, smaller, but with one difference that should bother you more, not less. In the east, the funds that pay the unions are private trusts.

In WA, two of the entities on the unions' own receipts are statutory bodies, created by parliament, funded by compulsory levy.

The Construction Training Fund, the state authority financed by a levy on every building job in WA, paid the CFMEU about $590,000 across three years, on the union's own federal returns.

MyLeave, the statutory long service leave board, appears as a payer too. I'll say the fair thing up front: the likely explanation is training delivery contracts, the union runs training, the fund buys training, and I haven't yet seen the contracts.

I'll show you them when I do.

But sit with the structure: in WA it isn't a union-and-employer trust paying the union, it's arms of the state. And the rest of the pattern is here too.

Reddifund, WA's redundancy fund, sponsors the union's May Day at $20,000 a year. The AWU has become WA Labor's steady union funder, $180,000 last year, double the year before, right on the election.

And the Victorian electrical union quietly sends its WA branch more than $300,000 a year, rising, the eastern machine, subsidising the west. This is the first WA post.

It won't be the last, 1000% for sure, researched factual facts to follow, in due time.

100% Truth, Corrected when Wrong, No Miss-Information.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
- AEC Transparency Register, Detailed Receipts — Construction Training Fund → CFMEU ($399,435 FY2017-18; $164,748 FY2018-19; $25,824 FY2019-20). MyLeave → AMWU ($18,882, 2019-20). "REDDIFUND – MAYDAY" ($20,000, 2024-25) and prior Reddifund lines. AWU WA Branch → WA Labor ($179,918, 2024-25; $80,764 prior). ETU Victoria → CEPU Engineering & Electrical Division WA Branch ($306,487, 2024-25, rising series from 2020-21).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST E — THE FUNDS HAVE OPINIONS

Here's a question nobody asks about the worker entitlement funds: what do they do besides hold money?

The answer, in Incolink's own annual reports: they do politics.

The fund's own words, it "strongly advocated with all levels of Government," it "successfully advocated for major investment in social housing and construction industry economic stimulus," it commissioned a report from the McKell Institute, a think tank named after a Labor premier.

One of the training bodies in the ecosystem even appears in the AEC's records making a political donation in its own name. Now, some of that advocacy, vaccines on worksites during COVID, was plainly in workers' interests, and I'll say so.

That's not the finding.

The finding is this: try to find any of it on a register. You can't.

These entities aren't registered lobbyists, the lobbyist registers only cover firms lobbying for clients, and an organisation lobbying for itself is invisible to every register in the country.

They're not registered with the AEC.

They file nothing about their advocacy, anywhere, to anyone. Billions of dollars of workers' money, held by entities that advocate to governments, commission aligned research, and occasionally donate, with no disclosure obligation of any kind.

Not because they're breaking a rule. Because no rule was ever written.

I showed you earlier this week that Parliament tried to write one in 2019 and the Bill died. This is what lives in the space where that law should be.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
Incolink annual reports 2020 and 2021 (advocacy statements, McKell commissioning — https://t.co/hyztQjrjRf); AEC Transparency Register (PICAC donation, 2020-21); Australian Government Register of Lobbyists scope (https://t.co/7pfsnUlUDV — third-party lobbyists only); Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2019, APH record (lapsed 25 July 2022).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST D — THE DELOITTE VERDICT

Cbus is the $105 billion construction super fund, the fund that holds the retirement savings of every construction worker in the country who joined it. In December 2024, the fund published a Deloitte independent review it had commissioned into a specific expenditure class: partnership agreements that channel millions of dollars a year from Cbus to its union sponsors, including the CFMEU.

Here's what Deloitte concluded, in its own words: Cbus has "failings in the design and operation of its BFID arrangements", its Best Financial Interests Duty arrangements, and Deloitte "were unable to conclude whether the Expenditure Decisions were made for the sound and prudent management of the Trustee's business operations or if they achieved the intended benefits."

The fund's own independent reviewer could not conclude the union payments met the statutory best-financial-interests-of-members test.

That is not a fringe finding. Under superannuation law, trustees must apply members' money in the members' best financial interests. Cbus commissioned Deloitte to check whether the union payments met that test. Deloitte's answer, on Cbus's own website: it could not conclude they did. The documentation, systems and processes "do not allow for that decision to be concluded clearly."

The lawful other side. Deloitte found all current and nominated directors "fit and proper." Cbus accepted all 26 recommendations. A rectification plan is under APRA oversight. In February 2025 the trustee entered a court-enforceable undertaking. APRA opened an investigation.

Cbus is doing what the regulator asked. And Deloitte's finding is about documentation of decisions, not proof that decisions were wrong.

That's the shape. A super fund's own independent reviewer cannot say the payments it made to unions met the statutory test the payments must meet. That verdict is on the fund's own website.

Every construction worker with a Cbus account has a stake in what the investigation finds.

The regulator's decision is the one to watch.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
Deloitte Independent Review into Cbus expenditure decisions and BFID arrangements (published https://t.co/KuXkquTmo8, 3 December 2024). APRA public statements (Investment Magazine, February 2025) — court-enforceable undertaking and open investigation into possible breaches of the SIS Act with focus on expenditure management practices. Cbus Annual Report 2025 — 26 recommendations accepted, rectification plan under APRA oversight.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST C — MEMBERS' MONEY WASTED

I want to show you what a single financial year of members' money going up in smoke looks like, on the union's own audited accounts, signed by the administrator.

The CFMEU Victorian branch's financial statements for the year to 30 June 2025 record an impairment of $4,926,610 on the AS400 Modernisation Project. AS400 was a bespoke membership system commissioned by the union's past leadership, projected to cost the Victorian branch over $10 million.

The administrator wrote nearly $5 million of it off in a single year.

Same accounts, same year: an impairment of $27.6 million on land and buildings.

The Victorian branch reported a net loss of $1.6 million in FY25. It reported a net loss of $18.5 million in FY24.

Add it up. About $32.5 million of value destruction on the union's own audited accounts, disclosed by the administrator, in one financial year. Members' money. Not government money. Not fund money. Members' subscriptions, over years, converted into a bespoke IT system and property assets that had to be written down.

The lawful other side. Impairment is an accounting recognition, not a cash loss, the loss happened years earlier, when the money was spent. The administration is doing what an administration is supposed to do: mark the books to reality. Under previous union leadership, both projects were signed off as members' interest at the time. Building projects and IT projects go wrong across every organisation of that size. The disclosure is the remedy, every figure I've quoted is out because the administrator put it out.

That's the finding.

The union's own books, once the administrator opened them, showed $32.5 million of members' money that couldn't be defended by the assets it bought. Ask what governance produces that outcome, and ask what governance would have caught it earlier. The reform Bill that would have required more disclosure of grants and loans between registered organisations and their controlled entities was in the Senate in 2019. It never passed.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
- CFMEU (C&G Division) Victorian Branch financial report FY2025 — filed with Fair Work Commission, signed by the administrator (AS400 Modernisation Project impairment $4,926,610; land and buildings impairment $27.6 million; net loss $1.6 million FY2025 and $18.5 million FY2024). Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2019, APH bill record r6347 — lapsed 25 July 2022.

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST B — THE UNION BRANCH ISN'T A UNION ANYMORE

The federal Queensland branch of the CFMEU earned $8.39 million in the year to 30 June 2025. Here's how much came from member dues, on a forensic accountant's report tendered to the Queensland Commission of Inquiry: $126,748.

One and a half per cent.

The rest, 98.5%, came from what the forensic accountant calls the enterprise-agreement ecosystem. Apprentice grants $7.11 million. EBA income $390,000. Compliance fees $270,000. Meeting fees $261,000. Promotional charges $121,000. Sponsorship $103,000.

Not one of those is dues. All of it is money paid into or through the funds that construction enterprise agreements make employers contribute to, Incolink, BERT, BEWT, Cbus, Protect, being paid back out to the union as fees and grants.

Natalie Faulkner from FTI Consulting reported this on 15 June 2026, from a general-ledger analysis running from 2015 to 2025. She found the pivot point precisely. On 25 August 2020, membership subscriptions in this entity collapsed from $9.62 million to $163,918 in a single year. The dues moved to a state-registered entity under a Service Agreement dated the same day. The federal branch became a fund-fee-and-grant collector.

Now the lawful other side. The Multiplex enterprise agreement Faulkner traced provides for no payment to the union at all. Employers pay the funds, not the union. What the union earns is second-order, sponsorships, promotional charges, compliance fees, training grants. All legal. All disclosed to fund boards.

No adverse finding has been made about the arrangement itself. And it doesn't stand on its own, the employer peak body Master Builders Victoria runs on the same class of revenue, from the same fund, at a similar concentration. Both sides.

That's the point. A registered trade union whose federal Queensland branch has been comprehensively converted, from 2020 onwards, into an entity that runs on fund revenue rather than member dues, and the enterprise agreements it negotiates are what feed it. Ask what that changes about who it works for.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
- FTI Consulting Interim Report by Natalie Faulkner, tendered to Queensland Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU, 15 June 2026 (general-ledger analysis CY2015–FY2025). CFMEU federal Queensland branch financial statements FY2025 (independent audited accounts, revenue lines matching Faulkner's figures).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

POST A — MBV DISCLOSED IT

Here's something that landed on the public record without much notice. Master Builders Victoria, the Victorian employer peak body for builders, filed its FY24-25 audited financial statements with the Fair Work Commission on 8 December 2025. And for the first time in its published accounts, it named Incolink as the source of its grant income.

The figures. Incolink paid MBV $16,733,891 in the 2025 financial year: an $8,672,070 training grant, a $6,881,848 grant toward MBV's new Collaboration and Innovation Centre, and $1,179,973 in OHS training. Combined, that's 98.9% of every grant dollar MBV received.

Against MBV's total revenue of $30,485,833, that's 54.9%.

The same accounts disclose a further Incolink commitment: $15 million toward the Collaboration and Innovation Centre, of which $6.88 million was recognised in 2024-25 and $1.70 million in 2023-24, leaving $6.41 million as a remaining contract liability.

Incolink is the Victorian construction redundancy fund, built on employer contributions made under enterprise agreements. It is jointly governed by union and employer nominees under APRA-supervised trustee rules. Capital grants to industry training and welfare bodies are common in the sector, and none of the arrangements described above has attracted an adverse regulatory finding.

What's new is the disclosure itself.

The MBV FY23-24 report a year earlier didn't name Incolink at all, grant income appeared as a single unattributed "Grants" line. A year later, post-FWC-inquiry, the source is named. Every figure above is a direct read of MBV's own audited statement, filed with the FWC and publicly available at the source cited. Every figure comes from the entity that received the money, disclosing it publicly.

That's what disclosure exists for. And this is what the disclosure said.

What's your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
Master Builders Victoria General Purpose Financial Report FY24-25, filed with Fair Work Commission FR2025/161, 8 December 2025 — Note 3(a) itemising grant income by source (Incolink training grant $8,672,070 + CIC grant $6,881,848 + OHS training grant $1,179,973 = $16,733,891); total grant income $16,917,435; consolidated revenue $30,485,833; Note 8 identifying $15 million in Incolink CIC grant funding with $6,881,848 recognised FY25 and $1,699,310 recognised FY24. MBV FY23-24 General Purpose Financial Report, filed with Fair Work Commission — Revenue Note 3 disclosing grant income of $11,224,948 as an unattributed line (comparison basis for the FY25 first-time-named disclosure).

[Peter Lyndon-James @PeterPerthWA]

So you support One Nation do you.?

You’re going to want to quit. Let’s get that straight right now.

Somewhere between now and the next election, Pauline Hanson is going to make a decision you don’t understand. Something that doesn’t sit right, or the media will twist into the worst possible headline and shove down your throat on every channel, every website, every radio station in the country.

And in that moment, you’re going to have a choice.

The media will tell you one story. One Nation won’t be able to tell you theirs. That’s how politics works. There are deals done behind closed doors that can never be explained publicly. Conversations that stay in the room. Compromises that look terrible from the outside but made sense when you were sitting at the table with a gun to your head.

You won’t see any of that. You’ll just see the headline, the headline will be designed to do one thing, make you walk away.

That’s the game and if you don’t understand it now, you’ll fall for it later.

Supporting One Nation isn’t a summer holiday. You’re signing up for every season. Summer, winter, autumn, spring, and some of those seasons are going to be brutal.

There’ll be weeks where nothing makes sense. Weeks where you’re embarrassed. Weeks where your mates are laughing at you for backing them.

That’s where faith comes in. Trust. The understanding that you can’t see the full picture from the outside, and neither can the bloke on Sky News telling you it’s all falling apart.

When soldiers go to war, they don’t get a full briefing on every decision the generals make. They hold the line because they believe in what they’re fighting for. They trust that the people making the calls have information they don’t and they don’t desert the moment things get uncomfortable.

She’s going to make calls you disagree with. She’s going to cop headlines that make her look like she’s sold out. The media is going to paint every stumble as proof the whole thing’s cooked. And you’re going to have to decide whether you trust the woman who survived prison, survived 30 years of attacks, and built a movement from nothing, or whether you trust the people who put her there.

Don’t sign up for this if you’re only here for the good days. One Nation needs supporters who’ll stand in the mud, not just wave from the grandstand.

Because if you bail the moment it gets hard, you’re not a supporter. You’re exactly what the establishment ordered.

What’s your thoughts…?

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺