Source : Perth Now news
“Highly disturbing” evidence about the CFMEU has compelled an investigator to hand down his findings more than a year earlier than planned.
Queensland is being urged to adopt a comprehensive construction industry code and establish a new regulator after the commissioner of its inquiry into the union’s misconduct, Stuart Wood KC, decided he had heard enough.
“After more than 50 hearing days and evidence from over 80 witnesses, I am satisfied that there is an urgent and pressing need to make these recommendations,” Mr Wood wrote in his interim report released on Wednesday.
“I have now heard extensive and, at times, highly disturbing evidence of misconduct by the CFMEU.”
The commissioner referenced “notorious” cost blowouts on blue ribbon government-funded projects like Brisbane’s cross-river rail and the Centenary Bridge, as well as the Gold Coast light rail.
He found a policy introduced in 2018 under the state’s former Labor government – known as the Best Practice Industry Conditions (BPIC) – had conservatively inflated the cost of projects by 20 per cent.
They ranged from a $21 million blowout for the Centenary Bridge to $500 million for the Cross River Rail – attributable solely to that policy – representing 15 and 10 per cent cost increases respectively.
Mr Wood also found the BPIC, which in January was scrapped by the state’s coalition government, had emboldened the CFMEU in what he described as a turf war with a rival construction union, manifesting in “undesirable” ways.
He called on the Queensland government to use its purchasing power, including $119 billion in its infrastructure pipeline in the coming four years, to bring the construction industry to heel.
“Contractors and subcontractors should risk losing government work if they failed to comply with the report’s recommended industry codes,” Mr Wood said.
The new rules would also include requiring contractors to show how they had improved against the negative outcomes of the BPIC.
“They are uncontroversial,” the commissioner said of his recommendations.
