source : the age
Below is a delayed livestream of the royal commission proceedings. If you would like to make a submission to the inquiry click here.
Stephen Villella, the delivery director for the consortium behind the Gap Road level crossing removal project, has shared his recollection of the CFMEU disruption of the project.
He appeared bemused when Tim Jefferie, the counsel assisting the royal commission, asked if union officials stopped work on the site and issued notices due to genuine safety concerns.
“It was nasty,” Villella said when asked if he remembered the union’s campaign.
“I felt that it required me to be on site more frequently. It was irrational, and it was, in my view, obviously designed as a point of leverage to change out our traffic and labour.”
The royal commission has just started for the day.
The first witness is Stephen Villella, who was the delivery director for the consortium behind the $110 million Gap Road level crossing removal project when the CFMEU disrupted the project in June 2022.
He now works for construction company Seymour Whyte, but was employed by CPB Contractors when it was part of the Rail Infrastructure Alliance that built the Sunbury rail line project.
Tim Jeffrie, a counsel assisting, the royal commission, is questioning Villella about his experience in the industry and has started to ask about his work on the troubled Gap Road project that is the focus of this tranche of hearings.
Below is a delayed livestream of the royal commission proceedings. If you would like to make a submission to the inquiry click here.
As mentioned earlier in this blog, counsel assisting Chris Young, KC, strongly criticised the Victorian Infrastructure Delievery Authority (VIDA) yesterday for redactions that took out relevant material from documents it was forced to disclose to the commission.
You can see the covered-up notes that Young complained about below:
Young tabled two versions of a book of handwritten notes by Evan Tattersall, the then chief executive officer of Rail Projects Victoria (later rebadged as VIDA), which contained entries about the Gap Road level crossing removal project, which is the subject of the current block of hearings.
One version of the notebook was almost entirely blacked out, and Young noted that it was submitted to the commission on November 7, more than two weeks after the commission requested information from VIDA about Gap Road, and just two days before hearings began.
Late yesterday there was a significant update in the fake qualifications scam that has recently emerged as a fresh Big Build headache, as Nick McKenzie reported that two senior bikies had been arrested and charged.
Here’s a taste of that story:
The bosses of two of Victoria’s most feared bikie gangs, the Bandidos and the Hells Angels, have been charged over allegations they obtained falsified qualifications as part of a criminal racket that has infected the Labor government’s Big Build.
Hells Angels supremo Kane Montebello and Bandidos president Codee Staff are veteran bikies who both worked as CFMEU health and safety officials before revelations in The Age forced them from their union roles and led to the Kourakis royal commission.
Staff is also the lieutenant to fellow Bandidos leader and ex-CFMEU Big Build official Joel Leavitt, with the pair currently running a construction industry labour hire and consulting business. Kane Montebello is the brother of serving CFMEU senior organiser Matt Montebello.
Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk charged Kane Montebello and Staff this week with procuring fake building industry certificates from notorious industry conman Jack Younes.
Though the charges have not been proven, if the two former CFMEU health and safety delegates were operating with false building industry qualifications – posing a potential safety risk – it would further highlight how the construction union abandoned its principles when it embarked on the bikie-gang recruiting spree around 2021.”
Read the full story here.
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Kourakis royal commission into Victoria’s building industry.
Yesterday was most notable for a lengthy opening spray from Chris Young, KC, the counsel assisting the commission, towards the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority about its tardy and heavily redacted disclosure of documents.
That criticism was back by commissioner Christopher Kourakis, who said the authority’s slow compliance was interfering with the orderly running of the inquiry.
After that rather dramatic opening, the witnesses were a procession of construction company figures reflecting on relationships with the union, the practicalities on the ground on the $110 million Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury, north-west of Melbourne, and the response of government agencies to problems.
