Speaker 1: Having been in the trenches investigating this corruption scandal for
Speaker 1: two years, I mean my capacity for shop is probably
Speaker 1: somewhat less than the average person.
Speaker 2: Nick mackenzie has been digging into allegations of corruption in
Speaker 2: the CFMEU Construction Union since twenty twenty four. It's a
Speaker 2: powerful union meant to protect workers. Instead it's been accused
Speaker 2: of running a racket with Biki gangs and criminals ripping
Speaker 2: billions of dollars out of government funded projects. Now a
Speaker 2: report has laid bare the scale of it all.
Speaker 1: We've looked at a Biki gang infiltrating a government job
Speaker 1: over here, We've looked at Italian organized crime infiltrating a
Speaker 1: government project over there. But to see it all in
Speaker 1: one place, it was a tremendous dumping of shocking allegation,
Speaker 1: shocking conclusions, all leading in one direction. Which is why
Speaker 1: the hell was this allowed to go on at such
Speaker 1: scale and why has no one in a political class
Speaker 1: been held to account.
Speaker 2: The report's author, Barrister Jeffrey Watson, not only tore the
Speaker 2: cfm E you to shreds, but also claimed the Victorian
Speaker 2: government knew about the problems and did nothing about it.
Speaker 3: So if somebody had stomped on it earlier, the problem
Speaker 3: would have been fixed earlier. Now who had that responsibility?
Speaker 3: Bearing in mind these were government projects, Bearing in mind
Speaker 3: these were taxpayers dollars being spent.
Speaker 2: But that section of Watson's report, the question the Victorian
Speaker 2: labor government, was deleted before the report was published.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't believe this by looking up people. But I
Speaker 3: am a very bad tempered, petulant person, and I can
Speaker 3: erupt at a moment's notice, and I was really actually
Speaker 3: quite angry.
Speaker 4: So is this a cover up?
Speaker 2: I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today
Speaker 2: nine Newspapers investigative reporter Nick McKenzie on contracts, kickbacks and
Speaker 2: building site strippers. How did the rod take route in
Speaker 2: the construction industry. It's Tuesday, February seventeen.
Speaker 3: Nick.
Speaker 2: It's about two years ago since you first broke the
Speaker 2: story of what you called an unholy alliance between gangland
Speaker 2: figures and the CFMU. You know, bikeys, gangsters infiltrating unions
Speaker 2: and given powerful positions, often on those government funded projects.
Speaker 2: Now we've found out that there's even more going on.
Speaker 1: What do we know, Well, it's it's like a bad,
Speaker 1: sort of crazy Hollywood script. The latest set of allegations
Speaker 1: in terms of the depth of criminal infiltration, of the
Speaker 1: involvement of bikis, of bribery, of corruption, and drug trafficking
Speaker 1: on government sites, women allegedly being forced to perform sex
Speaker 1: acts to get work, or stripping in site sheds. But
Speaker 1: at the core of all this, and perhaps most seriously,
Speaker 1: is this conclusion from an anti corruption expert that the
Speaker 1: Victorian labor government not only had a duty to know
Speaker 1: this was going on in their government projects, but did
Speaker 1: know and did nothing about it. So it turned a
Speaker 1: blind eye effectively, and the cost of this failure to
Speaker 1: combat this crime and corruption, according to this anti cruption expert,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Watson SC is a studying fifteen billion dollars in
Speaker 1: Victorian taxpayer and federal taxpayer money.
Speaker 2: So all of this came out of the Queensland Inquiry
Speaker 2: into CFMU corruption where Jeffrey Watson testified. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us a bit more about what he said?
Speaker 1: Well, Jeffy Watson sc is a very well known corruption buster.
Speaker 1: He's best known previously for his work with the Ikak
Speaker 1: in New South Wales, bringing down both labor and liberal
Speaker 1: politicians and political figures, and what's his job is really
Speaker 1: what is the scale, what is the scope of the
Speaker 1: corruption of the c if me, what's happened, what's gone wrong?
Speaker 1: He testified to reveal for the first time the findings
Speaker 1: of this big eighteen month inquiry into what went wrong
Speaker 1: in Victoria.
Speaker 4: How bad did things get in Victoria?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's out of control.
Speaker 1: So that happened last week and it was absolutely stunning
Speaker 1: because what Watson found is breathtaking. I've never read a
Speaker 1: corruption report quite so jaw dropping as Watson's report gone.
Speaker 1: As all this sort of polite language, it's just a
Speaker 1: catalog of shocking biky corruption, union corruption, corporate corruption.
Speaker 3: A man who had killed somebody was released from jail
Speaker 3: and almost immediately appointed a health and safety representative of
Speaker 3: the Victorian branch of the CFU.
Speaker 1: He was extremely force, right on the stand, laying out
Speaker 1: who the baddies are, calling out gangland figures such as
Speaker 1: Mick gadovery infamous gangland figure, and really, I think, pointedly
Speaker 1: and importantly describing how parts of his report had been
Speaker 1: changed to remove a politically sensored material or something that
Speaker 1: he said he was very angry about. And that's content
Speaker 1: that reflected poorly, mostly in the Victoria Labor government.
Speaker 2: Who took them out?
Speaker 1: And why that they were removed by the sea from
Speaker 1: the administrative marker of in case now, he's a senior barrister.
Speaker 1: He was appointed by the Albanese government when our allegations
Speaker 1: first hit the press back in twenty twenty four. Irving's
Speaker 1: job is to take over the union, to get rid
Speaker 1: of the old ruling part of the union, to sack
Speaker 1: a bunch of officials for poor performance, for corruption, etc.
Speaker 4: And he's done that.
Speaker 1: But in this case, and keeping in mind is a
Speaker 1: Labor Party appointee, he stripped these two critical parts of
Speaker 1: the report that were most damaging to labor. Irving says
Speaker 1: he removed those parts of the report because he felt
Speaker 1: they were ill founded. There wasn't a basis for which,
Speaker 1: a proper basis for which Jeffrey Watchin should estimate that
Speaker 1: fifteen billion dollars of taxpayer money was wasted or ended
Speaker 1: up in the pockets of biky Games.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's speculative. It's speculative to say the sun will
Speaker 3: come up tomorrow. When you read the simple points which
Speaker 3: I had made in the original version of the report,
Speaker 3: I would have thought the primary criticism of it would
Speaker 3: have been that it was a statement of the bleeding obvious.
Speaker 1: The head of the Fair Work Commission, Murray Furlong, as
Speaker 1: a public servant, has backed that figure most recently.
Speaker 4: That figure is.
Speaker 3: Is consistent with what I've heard from officials from the
Speaker 3: Victorian government.
Speaker 1: And this is where it's really serious, I think, not
Speaker 1: just for Irving, but for labor federally in state. What
Speaker 1: we're seeing is that this scandal has gone so far.
Speaker 1: We know that corrupt union officials have been operating it.
Speaker 1: I've been turfed out, we know Gangland figures are deeply involved,
Speaker 1: they've been exposed, But not a single public servant and
Speaker 1: not a single politician has been meaningfully held to account
Speaker 1: for their role overseeing projects where all this bad behavior
Speaker 1: took place at the expense the taxpayer. And that's the
Speaker 1: big missing part here and that's what I think the
Speaker 1: removal of these parts of this report really underscores, you know,
Speaker 1: all the accountability that we're yet to see in this
Speaker 1: rolling and still very big scandal.
Speaker 2: So Nick, would you go as far to say that
Speaker 2: this is a cover up? And is there any doubt
Speaker 2: in your mind that the Victorian government new organized crime
Speaker 2: had infiltrated government projects and then didn't act.
Speaker 1: Well, there's two choices, isn't there The government was either
Speaker 1: so incompetent it didn't know biking bosses were working on
Speaker 1: its projects, or it knew and turn a blind eye.
Speaker 1: They're the two choices. I think about this. If your
Speaker 1: listeners are building a house and one day one of
Speaker 1: the subcontractors building and doing the tiling is replaced by
Speaker 1: a biker who rocks up and charges w amount, I
Speaker 1: mean you'd likely be making some pretty serious inquiries about
Speaker 1: why that's going on. It's the same thing was happening
Speaker 1: on state government projects, except at a vastly greater scale.
Speaker 4: So how could the not know about that? Edit duties
Speaker 4: know about that taxpayer money.
Speaker 1: It's responsible for making sure organized crime doesn't take hold.
Speaker 1: There is a huge amount of evidence that shows the government,
Speaker 1: to some extent at least did know this was going on.
Speaker 1: We know there's documents internally which raise allegations of blackmail, extortion, and.
Speaker 4: Now it's saying it didn't know.
Speaker 1: The Premier of Victoria just interallled and saying I didn't
Speaker 1: know until it hit the media. I mean that is
Speaker 1: quite clearly, blogoney. So certainly we deserve to know how
Speaker 1: much the government knew. We deserve to know the extent
Speaker 1: of that government in competence and failure to act on
Speaker 1: organized crime. And while we don't know, there's a cover
Speaker 1: up in place, and that cover up remains in place
Speaker 1: as I speak here.
Speaker 2: Right now, coming up, how far has the rot spread
Speaker 2: outside Victoria? So, Nick, what has the Victorian government said
Speaker 2: about the allegation so far?
Speaker 4: Have they said anything? Whenever we reveal.
Speaker 1: More of this corruption and crime we hear the same
Speaker 1: thing or terrible. We don't like corruption and crime, says
Speaker 1: the Victorian premier in the government. It's appalling. It should
Speaker 1: be referred to the authorities. And they said that again
Speaker 1: last week in response to this latest eruption.
Speaker 5: When allegations were raised with me, they were referred to
Speaker 5: the relevant authority for their investigation. I have said that
Speaker 5: on previous occasions. Then when the media reports around the
Speaker 5: widespread nature of this rotten culture became public in the
Speaker 5: middle of twenty twenty four, we acted immediately.
Speaker 1: It just handles this shit samage to the Victorian police
Speaker 1: and to other authorities and says, well, you make of
Speaker 1: it what you will. That's never going to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. I mean, the Victorian Police do
Speaker 1: a fine job, but like every state police force around
Speaker 1: this country, they're utterly stretched. And it's not the job
Speaker 1: of the Victorian police to ask the question order to
Speaker 1: answer it. What did politicians know about corruption? Did they
Speaker 1: enable it by failing to act on it? What do
Speaker 1: the bureaucrats know about corruption? How did this corruption work?
Speaker 1: That These are questions that for well outside the duties
Speaker 1: of the Victoria Police Force. Their question is normally left
Speaker 1: for some proper inquiry, a commission of inquiry, a royal commission.
Speaker 1: So while there is a strong comment from Victoria Labor government,
Speaker 1: it's actually very very weak in substance.
Speaker 4: And let's not forget this.
Speaker 1: The minister responsible for many of these projects while they
Speaker 1: were hosting this corruption and crime wasn't another than the
Speaker 1: Premier just Cinter Allen. She was the Transport and Infrastructure
Speaker 1: minister in charge of these major government projects. While the
Speaker 1: infiltration of organized crime, of biokis, of corrupt unionits occurred,
Speaker 1: it happened under her watch. And so that system of
Speaker 1: Westminster accountability, the bucks should stop at the top. And
Speaker 1: that might be the reason why we're not having a
Speaker 1: proper system of accountability in place to ask those critical
Speaker 1: questions who in government knew what and when and why
Speaker 1: didn't they act.
Speaker 2: A lot of the focus has been on what's been
Speaker 2: going on in Victoria's CFMU, but Queensland, as we know,
Speaker 2: is looking into the union there as well. It's had
Speaker 2: its own commission of inquiry. So how widespread do you
Speaker 2: think corruption is across the construction industry.
Speaker 4: It's vastly widespread.
Speaker 1: We've seen very significant cases of organized crime infiltration and
Speaker 1: corp union operations in New South Wales, to a lesser extent, Queensland,
Speaker 1: and certainly to a massive extent in Victoria. There's issues
Speaker 1: in WA, there's issues in South Australia. This has been
Speaker 1: a festering problem in Australia for decades. But there is
Speaker 1: some silver linings the Victorian police. The police in Victoria
Speaker 1: are doing a good job finally having a.
Speaker 4: Crack at some of these criminal elements.
Speaker 1: But the same thing is not happening in New South
Speaker 1: Wales and Queensland and elsewhere where.
Speaker 4: Why is it such a problem.
Speaker 1: Well, we've had decades long issue of organized crime of
Speaker 1: union corruption on construction sites. It must be said that
Speaker 1: this can't happen without corrupt corporates. This is as much
Speaker 1: a union problem as it is a company problem, and
Speaker 1: it's a problem that we've seen overseas, most famously in
Speaker 1: the United States, the FBI had mega task forces set
Speaker 1: up to crack down on the unions working with the
Speaker 1: mafia in New York and other places to corrupt the
Speaker 1: construction industry there.
Speaker 4: So we're group of it. In Australia.
Speaker 1: It's starting to have some real political consequence now and
Speaker 1: maybe now this is the moment for change. Will we
Speaker 1: have a proper cleanup of the sector, this vital sector
Speaker 1: in Australia or will in five years will we be
Speaker 1: reading the very same headlines we've been reading most recently.
Speaker 2: Nick, since you started investigating this a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: There have been some attempts to clean up the industry,
Speaker 2: but from what you're saying, it sounds like nothing's really changed.
Speaker 1: I mean there are there has been some significant change
Speaker 1: of that must be said. So the bosses of the
Speaker 1: c for me, you that oversaw this corrupt mess, this
Speaker 1: infiltration of organized crime into government projects, they've been turfed out,
Speaker 1: They've left John Sector's gone, his executive.
Speaker 4: Has gone in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: Darren Greenfield, the former boss of this evening, he literally
Speaker 1: is sitting in jail right now for taking bribes. So
Speaker 1: we've had some corrupt elements removed, but what we've not
Speaker 1: had is a proper, in depth cleanup of the sort
Speaker 1: that will lead to sustainable, long term change. Companies that
Speaker 1: have been part of this racket, they've faced a zero accountability.
Speaker 1: Largely police aren't doing enough. There is some good work
Speaker 1: by the federal police. There's some great work by the
Speaker 1: Victorian police. But around the country the police it's like
Speaker 1: squeezing water with your hands, you just displace it. There's
Speaker 1: not enough police action, there's not enough regulatory action, there's
Speaker 1: not enough a.
Speaker 4: System wide cleaner. Why does this matter?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is money that me and you are
Speaker 1: spending as taxpayers on these government projects. So our money
Speaker 1: is being wasted. It could be going into health, education,
Speaker 1: ex it's not. It's going to the pockets of bikis.
Speaker 1: We want a fair and level playing field for businesses,
Speaker 1: for workers in construction. Everybody listened to this will know
Speaker 1: somebody in one way or another who works in.
Speaker 4: The construction industry.
Speaker 1: It's a massive employer in this country, from the lowly
Speaker 1: workers holding traffic signs, to subcontractors to big building companies
Speaker 1: to union officials. It's a vast part of our economy
Speaker 1: and we deserve it to be clean. It shouldn't be
Speaker 1: infiltrated by organized crime. But perhaps the biggest reason is
Speaker 1: when we have a corrupt union infects government, it leads
Speaker 1: for bad political outcomes.
Speaker 4: It leads for people in parliament who should not be
Speaker 4: in parliament.
Speaker 1: To see, if me, you sponsored people into our states
Speaker 1: and federal parliaments for many years, should they be there.
Speaker 1: So we as voters were as citizens, deserve better and
Speaker 1: we deserve a proper clean out.
Speaker 4: And that's why it's so important.
Speaker 2: Nick, thanks for speaking with us. Also in the news,
Speaker 2: Navid Akrim, the man accused of taking part in the
Speaker 2: Bondai terror attack, has appeared at a Sydney court via
Speaker 2: video link. The twenty four year old faces fifty nine charges,
Speaker 2: including fifteen counts of murder and one of committing a
Speaker 2: terrorist attack over the shooting in December. Akram's father was
Speaker 2: shot dead by police at the scene of the attack,
Speaker 2: which took place during a Jewish Harniker by the Sea event.
Speaker 2: Akram's lawyer says it's too early to say how his
Speaker 2: climb will plead and supermarket giant Coles has been accused
Speaker 2: of a planned campaign to mislead customers over price discounts.
Speaker 2: In a case now before the federal court, the consumer
Speaker 2: watchdog the A Triple C is suing the supermarket, claiming
Speaker 2: it ripped off customers by hiking prices for a short
Speaker 2: period of time before dropping them for their down Down promotion.
Speaker 2: Coles argues the price rises were justified, citing high inflation
Speaker 2: and supply demands. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven a m.
Speaker 2: Catch you tomorrow.