CFMEU ‘cut deal’ with Queensland police to keep them off building sites

The Queensland police union signed an agreement with the construction union that prevented police officers getting involved in disputes on worksites, even when they turned violent, a lawyer and corruption investigator told an inquiry into the union today.

Geoffrey Watson SC, a co-founder of the Centre for Public Integrity, said he had seen a “memorandum of understanding” between the CFMEU’s building division and the Queensland Police Association, “which was in effect to mean they (the police) had no jurisdiction once it became an industrial dispute”.

“It’s well known if you call the police to ... an industrial dispute, they would say: ‘This is an industrial matter. We’re not getting involved,” Mr Watson told an inquiry in Brisbane being conducted by industrial relations barrister Stuart Wood KC.

“I didn’t understand that. I thought that the criminal law was across, up and down and everywhere in Australia.”

Neither the Queensland Police Service nor Queensland Police Association immediately responded to a request for comment.

The allegation by the inquiry’s first witness is significant because it may help explain why union officials were able to engage in what Mr Watson has portrayed as a campaign of intimidation and violence by the union against building companies, government officials, competing unions and non-union workers.

Workplace violence

Videos were shown to the inquiry showing two non-union workers trying to access a government construction site in the Brisbane suburb of Dutton Park last April.

Heavily outnumbered by CFMEU members, the two men were fought back on to a busy road and one man’s shirt was ripped off.

Mr Wood asked if he “was simply trying to get to work?”

“Exactly,” Mr Watson said. “He was simply trying to get to work.”

Mr Watson said most construction companies refused to help him gather information for an investigation into the Queensland branch published several months ago.

An employee of CPB Contractors, one of Australia’s biggest construction companies, who had helped Mr Watson said “I can’t talk to you any more,” after the company intervened and told Mr Watson he would have to submit questions though a private law firm.

Mr Watson said large building companies “will whinge from the sidelines but they will not assist in finding a solution”.

CPB Contractors, which builds railways, hospitals and airports, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s website states: “We are responsible corporate citizens who are focused on ‘big picture’ outcomes for people and their communities.”

Abusing the rivals

The Queensland Government initiated the inquiry to identify corruption and malpractice in the building industry that is driving up the cost of large projects.

With the State suffering a shortage of construction workers, the Government faces steep costs for building projects for the 2032 Olympic Games.

The first two days of hearings have concentrated on Mr Watson’s investigation and his theory that the Queensland branch of union wanted to replicate the success of its counterpart in Victoria under former secretary John Setka.

The Victorian division used intimidation and coercion to take over large government infrastructure projects from the Australian Workers’ Union and was more likely to represent workers on the government-funded projects, he said.

“They were just looking at what happened in Victoria and thought: ‘Well, we’ll have a piece of that action too,’” Mr Watson said.

Mr Setka resigned last July after 12 years in the job, and was charged last week with trying to intimidate the union’s administrator, Mark Irving, who will give evidence to the inquiry on Thursday.

Mr Watson said when he sent Mr Setka a message, the union leader warned the lawyer he “better hope I never cross his path” and said he was a “f...ing fat ugly c...”.

Family day insults

Video was shown of CFMEU officials verbally abusing AWU representatives, accusing them of betraying workers and making threatening gestures close to their faces. CFMEU officials printed anti-AWU stickers and snuck into a carpark under the AWU offices and covered officials’ cars with the stickers.

At a family union day in 2023 a heavily built CFMEU member approached a female AWU official and her 13-year-old child, according to Mr Watson.

“You’re a grub,” he said. “You’re a sell-out. You sell out workers.”

The woman replied: “Don’t do this in front of my kid.”

He moved closer to them and told the child: “How does it feel to know that your Mum is a f---in’ grub who sells out workers?”

The Federal Labor government placed an administrator in charge of the union in 2024, which led to the firing of two senior Queensland officials, secretary Michael Ravbar and assistant secretary Jade Ingham.

Mr Watson said bad behaviour in the division had been stamped out under chief executive Jared Abbott. The union “is getting back on its feet,” Mr Watson said. “The beast has gone.”