It was Thursday night and Dickson Tradies was wall-to-wall with young men who hugged the bar and poured their wages into the pokies, their schooners perched precariously on the edges of machines hungry for cash. Lots of it. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had built its empire in Canberra from gambling, using the dividends to pay for everything from workers’ holiday cottages to Labor election campaigns. The union was cashed up and in this small city of intimate connections, the local secretary, Dean Hall, was its emperor. Hall was old-school union muscle, a former rugby league star who played by the rules. His rules. Bruce Paxton jostled his way to a spare table and waited, knowing that Hall would be somewhere in his realm this night. Two beers later he turned to a familiar voice. ‘Comrade.’ Paxton rose from his chair to embrace one of the very few men who’d stuck by him when others fled. There was something about this union heavy that Paxton could relate to, a throwback to a simpler time with a simple creed: strength in numbers.
