{"id":712414,"date":"2026-06-03T11:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/712414\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T11:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:02:22","slug":"john-setka-faces-court-over-alleged-threatening-emails-to-cfmeu-administrators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/712414\/","title":{"rendered":"John Setka faces court over alleged threatening emails to CFMEU administrators"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expletive-ridden text messages allegedly sent by former construction boss John Setka to CFMEU administrators have been made public in fresh court documents.<\/p>\n

Warning: This story contains offensive language<\/p>\n

Mr Setka, 61, today appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates\u2019 Court where he has been charged with 10 counts of using a carriage service to menace or offend and one count of committing an indictable offence while on bail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a brief administrative hearing, lawyers for Mr Setka told the court he had been the subject of death threats, which police were investigating.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

John Setka allegedly sent a number of threatening, offensive and abusive emails. (AAP: Stefan Postles)<\/p>\n

Fresh charge sheets released by the court now reveal the nature of the threats the former union boss was accused of levelling at former CFMEU administrator Mark Irving KC<\/a> .<\/p>\n

The court documents allege that in October last year, Mr Setka contacted a union administrator on nine occasions with expletive-laden email and texts.<\/p>\n

In one email allegedly sent on October 27, Mr Setka told an administrator to get their noses “out of albos ass [sic]”.<\/p>\n

He allegedly followed up on October 28 with another email urging an administrator to organise for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to have a colonoscopy \u201cbecause that\u2019s how far up his arse you dogs are\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

John Setka is the former boss of the Victorian CFMEU.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 (AAP: Joel Carrett)<\/p>\n

On October 30, Mr Setka allegedly sent a text message which told an administrator to “go and f*** your mum \u2026 and leave me alone you f***in fat ugly c***”.<\/p>\n

Until now, the nature of the threats allegedly levelled by Mr Setka have only been briefly aired during a Queensland commission of inquiry<\/a> into the CFMEU in November last year.<\/p>\n

During the hearing, prominent anti-corruption barrister Geoffrey Watson SC, who authored a damning report into the union, told the commission Mr Setka called him a “f***ing fat, ugly c***”.<\/p>\n

“He then gave me some weight loss advice,” Mr Watson said.<\/p>\n

The charge sheets released by the court allege that on October 30 last year, Mr Setka sent two texts calling an alleged victim a “f***in fat ugly c***” and telling them to “get some liposuction on your fat neck and get a lap band for your stomach and one for your mouth, you f***in dog”.<\/p>\n

Mr Setka is on bail and will return to court at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expletive-ridden text messages allegedly sent by former construction boss John Setka to CFMEU administrators have been made public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,79005,2025,346238,1158,85,7893,2024],"class_list":["post-712414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cfmeu","tag-charges","tag-john-setka","tag-police","tag-sports","tag-union","tag-victoria-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}