More than 100 demonstrators have gathered at the intersection of Victoria and Elizabeth streets, away from any police presence near the union building. Officers have created a barricade across all four lanes of Elizabeth street and are standing guard at the entrance to CFMEU offices, which was kicked in by construction workers on Monday.Protesters wearing hi-vis outfits continue to trickle in from Queen Victoria Market, chanting “Sack Dan Andrews”.Riot police are on scene, with a busload of more than 30 police also arriving to barricade the front entrance of the building around 9.30am. Police began asking protesters their reasons for being there, with officers seen escorting two men away. It is unclear if they were arrested. Anti-vax Telegram groups, with more than 8000 members, encouraged everyone to “bring friends and family in support” and “rally will continue until demands are met”.Police arrested several people at Monday’s violent protest, but were unable to give an exact number on Tuesday morning.Officers labelled it an “increasingly hostile” protest and have vowed to track down as “many of those in attendance as possible”.SETKA BLAMES ‘DRUNKEN MORONS’ FOR CFMEU CHAOSCFMEU state secretary John Setka said he will not pander to the “drunken morons” and “professional protesters” who descended on the union’s Melbourne headquarters on Monday.“We’re not going to let a group of morons like that dictate and intimidate the union, I mean it’s not going to happen,” he told 3AW.“The vast majority of protesters there were not construction workers, they’re just professional protesters. They just want to pick a fight all the time.”He said only a “small contingent” present at the protest were union members, with the remainder not appropriately dressed for the sector — only donning hi-vis. “They weren’t wearing work boots. They’re wearing tracksuit pants (and) brand new runners. I mean you can just tell, there were a lot of people there that had nothing to do with the construction industry whatsoever,” he said. Setka said he did not need to answer to anyone who was not a union member.“They’re not my members. They don’t pay my wages.”The union boss said he was currently “out on the road” with another protest having just begun at the headquarters at 10am.“At some time I probably will be popping in and out,” he said.“But the whole industry’s sort of closed, so there’s not really much point in our office remaining open, to be quite honest.”Construction workers pelt union officials and smash the front of the CFMEU head quarters in Melbourne’s CBD SHORTEN LABELS CFMEU PROTESTERS ‘NAZIS’Former Opposition leader Bill Shorten hit out at the violent mob, accusing right-wing extremists of “weaponising” the lockdown.“There is a network of hard-right man-baby Nazis, people who just want to cause trouble,” he told The Today Show on Tuesday.“They want to complain about the vaccine and they deserve to get the full force of everything that’s coming their way.”Mr Shorten also claimed some protesters were “fake tradies”.“Some of those people in the crowd were construction workers, but others, I’m reliably informed, were fake tradies,” he said.“They’d been down to the Reject Shop and got themselves a $2 hi-vis so they could pretend they were construction.”CFMEU mapThe former Labor leader backed the Andrews government’s drastic move to shut down the construction for a fortnight, saying it was impossible for the industry to operate.“No one wants to see the industry shut down at all … but we do have a small number of people within construction who are making it impossible and intolerable to function properly in the short term,” he said.“It was sort of amusing at one level, where you had some construction tradies and people saying they were tradies sitting out in the main street having their lunch because they couldn’t meet in their tearoom.“We haven’t seen the nurses and the doctors and the vaccinators out there carrying on like this.”National – 2021 – Covid Vaccination StatsThe protesters attempted to storm the CFMEU building, kicking in doors, smashing glass and brawling as they rounded on leader John Setka.The union accused “outside extremists” of manipulating its members, saying the angry mob had been “infiltrated by neo-Nazis”.“They’re not really unionists, they’re just the scum of the earth as far as I’m concerned,” Mr Setka said.“Those drunken, fascist, un-Australian morons are the reason construction workers will be sitting at home and not getting paid for at least the next two weeks.”— Read more on Monday’s violent protests here
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