Players squaring up used to be part of the brutality of Aussie rules football, but retribution against umpires was always out of bounds. Yet that is what the thuggish Victorian CFMEU secretary, John Setka, is threatening by pressuring the Australian Football League to sack its head of umpiring, Stephen McBurney.
Mr McBurney was previously the head of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), the building site umpire established by the Howard government to uphold the rule of law and police the recidivist law-breaking and intimidation that is the CFMEU’s business model.