Former department head given contempt warning, as probe calls for new building code

Queensland’s CFMEU inquiry boss has warned lawyers for a former top bureaucrat that he was at risk of being found in contempt over his professed inability to recall details of discussions at the heart of two key concessions granted to the union.

It comes as the $95 million Stuart Wood-led probe issued an interim report late on Wednesday making formal recommendations for the Crisafulli government to introduce a new state building code and establish a new regulator to monitor and enforce compliance.

The inquiry this week returned to a case study into regulatory capture of the workplace safety regulator by the union, focusing particularly on the pressure exerted by the CFMEU during the short-lived tenure of one of Michael De’Ath’s deputies.

Former Education Department director-general De’Ath, who in that role between 2021 and 2024 also oversaw the state’s industrial relations and racing offices, returned to the stand on Wednesday for a second full day.

His evidence included early efforts by the mega-department’s deputy director-general in charge of the Office of Industrial Relations, Kym Bancroft, to remove a CFMEU-favoured figure with responsibility for managing safety inspectors, which raised the ire of the union.

De’Ath, the most senior former public servant called to date, said on Tuesday he could not recall calls and texts with since-ousted CFMEU state secretary Michael Ravbar in early August 2022, after it was put to him by counsel assisting that Ravbar had expressed disdain over the decision.

After this and other efforts by Bancroft to address cultural issues within the office, union figures began calling her directly with site complaints and concerns, leading to a proposal for a general 1300 number to be established to field and triage complaints.

The inquiry heard on Wednesday that the union refused to engage in early consultation on this system, which was also backed and signed off by De’Ath in mid-March 2023, and that it was simultaneously pushing for Bancroft to be removed from an executive director selection panel.

Around this time, Ravbar threatened to take his concerns to then-industrial relations minister Grace Grace, and attended a meeting with De’Ath and Bancroft that the director-general cut short due to Ravbar’s aggressive and inappropriate behaviour.

The inquiry was then shown an invitation for a meeting sent by Grace’s office to Ravbar and other building sector union figures the same day of his threat, set for early April.

Around the end of that meeting, on April 3, call records showed De’Ath was phoned by Grace’s office, and had a meeting of his own set with Grace for the following day. De’Ath said he could not recall what the pair discussed.

The inquiry was then shown an email by Bancroft from the morning of April 5, indicating the triage system was still being pursued. By that afternoon, following a call between De’Ath and Bancroft, it was to be paused with further consultation and an independent facilitator.

Counsel assisting, Dimitri Ternovski, put Bancroft’s version of events – that De’Ath told her Grace had considered the triage system and it would not be going ahead until the new executive director of compliance and field services was appointed – and asked if it was the truth.

De’Ath said it was not, but could not remember the detail of the call, while conceding the shift from the 1300 hotline to an interim arrangement was “another accommodation” of the union’s demands, but that he believed he and Grace would have “problem-solved” to make that shift.

At this point, Commissioner Wood reminded De’Ath’s lawyer, Emma Hoiberg, of a High Court opinion that the “feigned inability to remember”, if used by a witness to deliberately evade questions, can amount to an allegation of contempt.

Asked by Hoiberg if such a finding might be made against De’Ath, Wood said: “It seems to me that we’re getting very close to that position.”

Hoiberg said the questions related to phone calls and conversations from, in some cases, four years ago in the context of De’Ath’s “wide portfolio across a range of matters” and that “it’s not unexpected for Mr De’Ath to not have specific recall”.

After a break to allow Hoiberg to speak with De’Ath, Wood said he was effectively giving the warning required in some jurisdictions before a formal charge could be pursued either by an inquiry or the Supreme Court, but this did not mean it would be pursued.

De’Ath said he understood the frustrations of the inquiry, but that he was “sincere and genuine in saying that I just don’t remember all of those conversations” and was “not trying to be in any way evasive”.

He said he was not aware of any formal record of a decision to pause the pursuit of the triage system, nor that the department was required to keep one under the Public Records Act, but he rejected the suggestion this was an effort to obscure an intervention from Grace.

De’Ath earlier told the inquiry there was no influence from Grace’s office around either the pausing of the triage system or the eventual dismissal of Bancroft later that month relating to conflict of interest concerns De’Ath took to the Crime and Corruption Commission.

After the conclusion of evidence, the attorney-general tabled an interim report from Wood on a question it had posed to stakeholders about the reintroduction of a state building code and a “suitably resourced” regulator to oversee it. Both were formally recommended by Wood.

Despite suggesting during a hearing last month that it might not be prudent to wait until the inquiry’s final reporting date in December 2027 to start making broader recommendations to deal with evidence heard of wrongdoing, no such measures featured in Wednesday’s report.

The inquiry continues on Thursday, with further evidence from De’Ath.

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