Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association

Well, let's shift to the impact of AI on the shop front floor, talking about jobs.

Robert Tonki is the Chief of Staff at the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association.

It's a union, SDA.

It's a union that represents workers in retail, fast food, and warehousing, which is really the coalface of AI logistical efficiencies.

In 1996, he and two friends from his university debated establish Atticus Party Limited, a business that provides training for, quote, "clients from the corporate and education sectors in advocacy and communication skills," unquote, which is named after the iconic fictional character Atticus Finch from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

He is resigned as directorship and company the following year to join the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, known as SDA, as a union organization, union organizer.

He left SDA in 2003 to run for the New South Wales Legislative Council, and then he went on from there.

Now I'm gonna play you some of the clips.

The charismatic dynamo that is Ben Carroll is sworn in as the new Premier here in Victoria.

Unlike Jacinta Allen and Dan Andrews, he's from the right wing of the party and he's very closely aligned with our good friends, the SDA, as mentioned.

I believe he joined SDA as a teenager when he started working at Kmart.

What should we know before we dive into this new legislative attack that he got to very quickly once taking over the top job? What should we know about Ben Carroll and his relationship with the SDA and how that informs his politics?

I think it's even one step removed from that.

It's who gave him that seat, who allowed him to be Premier.

And in a state like Victoria... where the SDA claims to have 40,000 members, 10,000 less than a few years ago, but they still claim to have 40,000 members.

They have enormous sway in choosing who gets to be an MP and who gets to be Premier.

On the 12th of August, Ben Carroll and the Victorian Labor Government set the wheels in motion for a legislative attack on RAFU, the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union.

To many, the introduction of the Association's Incorporated Reform Amendment Bill 2026 into Parliament was was seen as Carroll paying his dues to the SDA, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, which has significant power within the Labor Party structure.

The SDA has been significantly challenged in recent years by RAFU, the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, RAFU has taken industrial and legal actions against what they say are cosy deals between big employers and the SDA, and in fact RAFU's successes in clawing back stolen wages and stymieing deals that fail the overall better-off test would seem to concur with this estimation.

This use by a right-wing Labor government using legislation to protect a conservative union's fiefdom has certainly caused a backlash.

We hear now from Avi Pugliali, MLC for North Eastern Metro Region in the Victorian Upper House, speaking at the Defend RAFU rally on September 5th.

But I say the more you see Labor when they show their true face, it shouldn't shock us.

So power to you all in opposing the bill in its current form and sending it off to have no future pathway.

From where it looks at the moment, this bill has no friends, apart from the SDA.