Why is bmake complaining about this on Solaris ?

bmake: "/usr/pkgsrc/x11/py-qt3-sip/Makefile" line 38: Malformed conditional
(${OPSYS} == "SunOS" && !empty(CC_VERSION:Mgcc*))
bmake: "/usr/pkgsrc/x11/py-qt3-sip/Makefile" line 44: if-less endif
bmake: "/usr/pkgsrc/x11/py-qt3-sip/Makefile" line 44: Need an operator

I suspect that something in the environment is causing
!empty(CC_VERSION:Mgcc*) to fail, but I can't locate what.

Any ideas?