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Construction boss recalls call from public servant seeking IR assurance
A public servant asked a major contractor for a commitment that industrial disputes like the CFMEU’s takeover of the Gap Road level crossing removal would not occur on future projects as the company bid for a work on airport rail, the Big Build royal commission has heard.
Michael Kalinowski, the executive general manager for CPB Contractors in Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, said he received a phone call from Darren Driscoll, the industrial relations director at Major Transport Infrastructure Authority, on June 1, 2022.
Kalinowski said he remembered the call as he was at Regent Theatre for CPB’s first town hall event since pandemic lockdowns lifted.
“What I took from the conversation was that he was looking for an assurance from me in this particular phone call that … the sort of things that were happening on Gap Road – or were about to happen in Gap Road, in hindsight – wouldn’t have happened on a future project,” he said.
Public servant excused from witness box
Senior public servant Peter Wilkinson has finished his evidence.
Counsel assisting Chris Young, KC, spent much of the 30 minutes Wilkinson spent in the witness box after lunch quizzing him about meetings that occurred amid the CFMEU’s disruption of the Gap Road level crossing removal on June 6 and 7, 2022.
Wilkinson said he could not recall much about the discussions more than four years ago. He was shown records from the time, but he said they didn’t refresh his memory.
The next witness to appear is Michael Kalinowski, the executive general manager for CPB Contractors in Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand.
Stay tuned for updates about his evidence.
Text messages aired as public servant quizzed about CFMEU response
The Big Build royal commission has just resumed after a lunch break and the inquiry is discussing text messages between senior public servants after the CFMEU stopped work at the Gap Road level crossing removal.
Peter Wilkinson, then a senior Rail Projects Victoria (RPV) official, sent a group text to RPV chief executive Evan Tattersall and RPV communications director Amanda Correy on the afternoon of June 6, 2022.
The inquiry heard Wilkinson’s message said: “FYI police are on their way to the Gap Road site to remove union organisers.”
Correy responds: “Thanks for the heads-up – I’ll let MO know. Are works still continuing?”
Wilkinson said: “Works are being greatly disrupted.”
The inquiry heard that “MO” referred to the minister’s office.
Public servant admits minister’s message meant contractors had to concede to CFMEU
Senior public servant Peter Wilkinson says he “appreciated the difficulty” contractors faced after he passed on feedback from the minister’s office that they would not win any more work in Victoria unless they handled industrial relations amid a dispute with the CFMEU.
The union shut down time-critical work at the Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury in 2022 to demand their allies be installed on site.
The consortium did not want to budge, but Wilkinson just gave evidence that the feedback from Jacinta Allan’s office was: “If they can’t handle the industrial [relations] in Victoria, then they can’t have any more work.” Allan was at the time the minister responsible for transport infrastructure.
Wilkinson told the royal commission he called consortium manager Joe Aygur with the message.
Allan’s office said contractors ‘can’t have any more work’ unless CFMEU handled
Jacinta Allan’s ministerial office said contractors “can’t have any more work in Victoria” if they didn’t handle industrial relations with the CFMEU, the Big Build royal commission just heard.
Peter Wilkinson, previously a senior public servant at Rail Projects Victoria, gave evidence today that his then-colleague, Evan Tattersall, told him he’d spoken to the minister’s office after the CFMEU stopped work at the Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury in June 2022.
The union demanded its preferred subcontractors and safety officials were installed, but the consortium didn’t want to agree, the inquiry heard.
Wilkinson said he discussed the dispute with Tattersall, who then the chief executive of Rail Projects Victoria, before his superior later “gave feedback from the minister’s office” to him. Allan was the minister responsible for transport infrastructure at the time.
Key public servant enters witness box
A public servant is the second witness to be called today and is now being grilled about what a key government agency did in response to the CFMEU’s disruptions at the Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury.
Peter Wilkinson was employed by Rail Projects Victoria (now part of the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority) when the union stopped work in Sunbury in June 2022.
He now works for the Suburban Rail Loop Authority.
Chris Young, KC, the counsel assisting the royal commission, is now asking him questions.
Analysis: The royal commission gets its first bluff witness
The Big Build royal commission has seen cautious witnesses, apologetic witnesses, studious witnesses. The first witness this morning, Stephen Villella, was the first you’d describe as bluff. He even attempted a joke.
He was being asked about an email he’d sent to confirm the CFMEU’s industrial relations victory in a key dispute on the Gap Road rail crossing site in 2022. The email’s purpose, asked Tim Jeffrie, the counsel assisting, was to “carry out the last step of the agreement … Is that right?”
“Hopefully that was the purpose,” Villella shot back, “and it wasn’t used at a parole board hearing.”
(The royal commission heard evidence earlier in the week that one union official had provided a reference to get a former bikie a job on a building site.)
Managers sat in ‘stunned silence’ after CFMEU figure left key meeting
The delivery director for the consortium behind the Gap Road level crossing removal project said managers sat in “stunned silence” when CFMEU official Joe Myles walked out of a high-stakes meeting at the union’s headquarters in June 2022.
Stephen Villella told the royal commission earlier today that contractors did not want to cede to the CFMEU’s demands to install union-approved safety officials and labour hire companies on Sunbury rail line project.
But the union disrupted time-critical work in June 2022, and the consortium needed to get work going again.
What was said at a pivotal meeting at CFMEU headquarters about the dispute has become a focus of the royal commission this week.
Project director says CFMEU official touted government influence
Stephen Villella told the royal commission he remembers meeting with Joe Myles and Paul Tzimas at the CFMEU’s headquarters in central Melbourne.
The union had disrupted time-critical work on the Gap Road level crossing removal project in June 2022 while the Sunbury train line was shut.
Project managers did not want to cede to their demands to install CFMEU-approved safety representatives and labour hire companies on the project, Villella said. They did not think the unions’ apparent safety concerns were genuine.
But faced with major cost and time blowouts if key works were not completed during a short occupation period, the rail consortium decided they had to meet with the union.
Witness names key CFMEU figure Joe Myles for work disruptions
Stephen Villella, a manager on major construction projects in Melbourne for years, let out a slight laugh when asked if he could describe previous interactions with the CFMEU on job sites he was involved in over the past decade.
“How many would you like?” he asked Tim Jeffrie, the counsel assisting the royal commission.
The barrister asked for a few examples.
Villella responded:
A great example is …. I was the project director, as I mentioned, on the CityLink-[Tullamarine Freeway] widening. Part of our work was a flyover bridge from Bell Street to Pascoe Vale Road – a very large steel bridge that was being lifted over the Broadmeadows or Craigieburn rail line. That required an occupation of the rail line, and we were attempting to do that in one night, piece by piece per night.
Joe Myles would attend every night personally to disrupt the work, encourage the workforce not to attend. We needed to call the police, and it took us until our 10th attempt to get that lifted.
So that, in my view, was an obvious point of weakness and cost pressure for the project – that a little bit of interference was sufficient to cancel the whole night.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
