Minister's Office Warned Contractor Over CFMEU Dispute, Royal Commission Hears

On Friday, a royal commission in Victoria heard from an official of the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority (Vida) for the first time. His evidence concerned a warning that, by his account, reached the contractors on a stalled rail project in June 2022: if they could not settle an industrial dispute, they might not get more work in the state.

The royal commission is examining the integrity of major public and civil infrastructure construction projects in Victoria. Its November public hearings, which run until 20 November, are focused on a 2022 level crossing removal at Gap Road in Sunbury. Earlier testimony described how officials of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) shut the site over purported safety concerns. They let work continue only after two of the union's own health and safety representatives were appointed and the project switched its traffic and labour hire companies to CFMEU-aligned firms.

The Vida witness was Peter Wilkinson, a civil engineer and former Vida official who is now executive general manager of the Suburban Rail Loop authority. He said that at the height of the dispute he talked with his manager at Vida, Evan Tattersall, about the need to get work going again. According to Wilkinson, Tattersall told him on either 6 or 7 June 2022 that he had raised the matter with the minister's office. Wilkinson assumed that meant the office of the then-minister for transport infrastructure, Jacinta Allan.

Tattersall's message, Wilkinson said, was that if they could not handle industrial relations in Victoria, they could not have any more work. Wilkinson understood Tattersall to be talking about the site's contractors, John Holland and CPB Constructions. He knew at the time that both were tendering for the airport rail project, another major state-funded job, but said he did not know whether the minister's office was aware of that. Tattersall did not tell him what to do with the information. Wilkinson passed it to Joe Aygur, general manager of the Rail Network Alliance involved in delivering the project. Aygur told the commission about the warning on Tuesday.

Counsel assisting, Chris Young KC, asked why there was no record of the conversation with Tattersall. Wilkinson said one likely reason was that events were moving quickly and the conversation needed to keep things moving rather than be formally recorded. He was also asked about a meeting set for 5pm on 7 June 2022 in Allan's parliament house office, the day work resumed at Gap Road. He was listed as an optional attendee on the online invite but said he could not recall whether he went.

The commission also heard from Stephen Villella, who worked for CPB Constructions and was delivery director at the site. He described the meeting at CFMEU headquarters that ended the dispute. It was, he said, "extremely galling" for company officials to have to "bend the knee" to the union. He said none of the safety concerns the union raised were serious enough to stop work. Workers were fearful of the CFMEU, he said, and once union officials began attending they would stay in the lunchroom for long periods. "They didn't want to come [to work] at all," he said, adding that they feared what would happen to them organisationally and individually if they did.

Villella disagreed with evidence given earlier in the week by former CFMEU organiser Paul Tzimas, who had said workers chose not to work. Villella said they were heavily pressured by union officials. In the roughly 30-minute meeting, he said, union organiser Joe Myles suggested that collaborating would help win future tenders such as the Melbourne airport rail project, and implied he had direct lines to Allan's office. Villella said he was not surprised, given what he had seen happen in the industry over the past decade. He said Myles left abruptly in the first half of the meeting, which felt like a snub. He rejected a suggestion from Myles's counsel that Tzimas, not Myles, had raised the list of union demands. After managers agreed to the demands, work resumed as normal. "Amazingly, all our safety issues ceased," Villella said.

The hearing followed criticism on Thursday, when Young strongly rebuked Vida for failing to disclose relevant evidence in a timely way. Senior counsel assisting Chris Carr SC said there had been a "substantial production of highly relevant material overnight". That material has opened several new lines of inquiry, and the commission is unlikely to hear from witnesses again until Tuesday.