Latest news with #BuildingBad
The Age
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
Ousted CFMEU leaders lose High Court challenge to take back union
Former CFMEU leaders have lost their High Court challenge against federal Labor's takeover of the scandal-plagued building union. The High Court threw out the case on Wednesday in a unanimous decision that rejected former union officials' attempt to wrest back control from a government-appointed administrator who stepped in to clean up the union last year. The government passed laws to oust most of the union's leadership after the Building Bad investigation by this masthead, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes last year reported allegations of corruption and infiltration by bikie gangs. The court's decision to uphold the government's forced take-over of the union will remove a roadblock for administrator Mark Irving, who had warned that the spectre of the CFMEU's former leaders returning to the organisation was hampering his efforts to reform it. Irving welcomed the court's decision on Wednesday, saying in a statement the 'attack on the legitimacy of the administration' was dismissed by the court. 'The administration is committed to returning the union to the membership as a strong, democratic, member-controlled union, enduringly free of corruption and criminal influence as soon as possible,' he said. Former Queensland CFMEU construction secretary Michael Ravbar, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, led the challenge and said members were disappointed, but they put up a good fight. 'What this result does show, however, is just how easy it is for hostile governments in cahoots with the ACTU to interfere in the operations and running of democratically run unions,' he said. 'It took little more than spurious allegations broadcast on a tabloid current affairs program. That should be of deep concern to any trade unionist.'
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ousted CFMEU leaders lose High Court challenge to take back union
Former CFMEU leaders have lost their High Court challenge against federal Labor's takeover of the scandal-plagued building union. The High Court threw out the case on Wednesday in a unanimous decision that rejected former union officials' attempt to wrest back control from a government-appointed administrator who stepped in to clean up the union last year. The government passed laws to oust most of the union's leadership after the Building Bad investigation by this masthead, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes last year reported allegations of corruption and infiltration by bikie gangs. The court's decision to uphold the government's forced take-over of the union will remove a roadblock for administrator Mark Irving, who had warned that the spectre of the CFMEU's former leaders returning to the organisation was hampering his efforts to reform it. Irving welcomed the court's decision on Wednesday, saying in a statement the 'attack on the legitimacy of the administration' was dismissed by the court. 'The administration is committed to returning the union to the membership as a strong, democratic, member-controlled union, enduringly free of corruption and criminal influence as soon as possible,' he said. Former Queensland CFMEU construction secretary Michael Ravbar, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, led the challenge and said members were disappointed, but they put up a good fight. 'What this result does show, however, is just how easy it is for hostile governments in cahoots with the ACTU to interfere in the operations and running of democratically run unions,' he said. 'It took little more than spurious allegations broadcast on a tabloid current affairs program. That should be of deep concern to any trade unionist.'
The Age
12-06-2025
- Sport
- The Age
‘Not to be messed with': Criminals recruited for country's biggest wind farm
When Keys arrived at the wind farm, west of Melbourne, as the AWU's chief delegate, he was determined not to let history repeat. According to project insiders, he began cultivating people who could keep the CFMEU at bay. Among them was ex-AFL player Billy Nicholls, who in 2015 was sentenced to 11 years' jail for shooting two men in their legs over drug disputes. Both victims survived, and Nicholls was convicted of intentionally causing serious his arrest, the former Hawthorn and Richmond player's life had become consumed by ice and a descent into the underworld. Keys told supporters Nicholls had not only left jail a reformed man, but with a tough-guy reputation that ensured the CFMEU had earmarked him to join its growing list of criminals-turned-union reps. Keys got in first, appointing Nicholls his new AWU wind farm deputy delegate. Nicholls would in turn bring his own hard men to the wind farm, proposing as a delegate an ex-Geelong bikie and boxer called Brad Azzopardi, who had been released from prison after being jailed for a dangerous driving incident that left a man dead. Wiser heads in the AWU intervened and Azzopardi, who has a 1 per cent bikie tattoo on his head, was instead given a support job on the wind farm. Nicholls also arranged for ex-bikie Jonny Walker, who served eight years in jail for manslaughter over the fatal bashing of a man in a bikie clubhouse, to get work at the wind farm after the CFMEU turfed Walker amid a bikie cleanout in the wake of the Building Bad scandal in July 2024. Along with hard men, Keys and his deputy were also assembling a group of staunch AWU companies capable of withstanding the CFMEU's pressure and heavy connections. Project sources said 24-7 would come to stand out. Workers from rival labour hire firms were pushed onto its books and 24-7 began promoting, through its website, its achievement in supplying 'approximately 50 skilled people … to one of the largest renewable wind farm projects in the world', as well as its 'close working relationships with industry stakeholders, including unions'. When project and union insiders queried why Keys appeared so enamoured with the labour hire company, despite its lack of obvious civil construction experience or AWU history, they became concerned it was because of the whispers that 24-7 had both gangland and CFMEU protection. When first approached by this masthead a fortnight ago, Keys said he had no knowledge of the firm's criminal links, or of any person called Bassem. He said 24-7 involved only 'two girl directors and the operations manager' and that he had 'never met a guy' called Bassem. Keys subsequently refused to answer further questions on the record, despite repeated attempts by this masthead to quiz him. But photos uncovered by this masthead show Keys, Nicholls and a third AWU delegate being hosted by 24-7 at the Collingwood AFL President's Lunch at the MCG on the day the Building Bad scandal broke last July. In the photos, there is no sign of the firm's female directors. Rather, the AWU trio are snapped at the 24-7 table posing with two brothers, Bassem and Osama Elsayed, along with a third man, Jarrod Hennig. Bassem is a convicted criminal who was accused in a September 2017 bail hearing by a Victoria Police special taskforce of hiring a violent criminal to bribe a grandmother preparing to testify that his brother Osama had shoved a gun in her son's mouth over a drug debt. A detective told the bail hearing of her concerns about Bassem's 'associations with organised crime' and how phone taps had captured him and his younger brother talking about how the violent criminal would be 'taking care of it'. Loading 'They have a conversation, laughing in regards to how loose … [the standover man] is and they know that he has … [previously] murdered someone,' the court heard. The court also heard allegations Bassem had separately extorted an associate over a $100,000 business loan, texting the victim: 'I hope Allah burns you in hell you thief' and allegedly hiring a standover man who threatened to 'rape' the debtor's family. After the victim retracted the most serious allegations from his statement, Bassem was sentenced in 2019 to six months' jail and a 12-month community corrections order. The conviction added to a criminal rap sheet that already included 'offences of violence, dishonesty, firearm, driving and drug offences' and which Victorian Supreme Court judge Rita Zammit described as 'significant'. Osama was, in August 2019, separately jailed for three years and four months for his role in a drug trafficking syndicate and for separate charges of robbery and recklessly causing injury. This drug syndicate was led by the third man photographed at the MCG lunch, Jarrod Hennig, who was jailed for eight years on multiple counts of drug trafficking. Industry, underworld and police sources, along with corporate and court records, reveal Hennig's middle name to be Morgan. He is the 'Jarrod Morgan' whose signature appears on AWU enterprise bargaining agreements secured by 24-7 in 2023 and 2024. Hennig is also married to Rebecca Reed, who signed off on the same documents as 24-7's director. Her co-director, Kristina Kuzmanovska, is Bassem Elsayed's wife. Osama Elsayed also appears to have been involved in the 24-7 group, creating a business called 24-7 Waterproofing in 2024 with fellow convicted drug trafficker Mohsen Mehrijafarloo. In January 2025, 24-7 Labour moved its registered office to a new Northcote business address. On the same day, Osama moved another of his businesses to the same registered office. The address is the office of accountant Charles Pellegrino, who for years has handled the finances of the CFMEU-backed gangland figures Mick Gatto and John Khoury. Pellegrino's Northcote office was raided in March by a federal police team investigating payments to Pellegrino's companies that were allegedly intended for Gatto, Khoury and other construction industry or union players. No charges have been laid. There is no suggestion the Elsayed brothers are the targets of that federal police operation. But they have their own strong links to the CFMEU. A character referee for Bassem at his 2017 bail hearing was ex-kickboxer and bouncer Chris Chrisopoulidis, who told the judge he was 'good friends' with Bassem. Chrisopoulidis would go on to become one of the CFMEU organisers who confronted Keys on the West Gate project. Bassem's wife, Kristina, is also a 50 per cent shareholder of a construction firm which gained a CFMEU enterprise bargaining agreement in 2021. Her co-owner of that business is builder Thomas Chillico, who is facing criminal charges for allegedly bribing a public official to gain construction permits. In a statement, Rebecca Reed said 24-7 'has no knowledge of or involvement with organised crime at all and is in all respects a well-run small family business. Loading 'If anyone has made allegations that 24-7 … is in any way involved with organised crime, those allegations are false,' she wrote. She said that while the company took a 'progressive approach to ex-offenders', Bassem had no 'formal involvement' with her firm. Reed did not answer several specific questions, or respond to further requests. Asked about whether he knew of 24-7 ties to any criminals such as Bassem, AWU secretary Ronnie Hayden said he had 'no idea who any of these people are'. 'When 24-7 came to us … Jared [sic] came with two women, Rebecca and Kristina,' he said. Hayden stressed he had never authorised the AWU to give preferential treatment to any labour hire firm. He conceded it was possible Keys had 'favoured' 24-7 because of concerns other labour hire firms were not giving the AWU the chance to recruit their workers as union members. 'I understand Johnny was pissed off with the labour hire companies that had done that,' he said. Before 24-7 was engaged at Golden Plains, there was the Host Group. It not only supplied multiple workers to the wind farm project but allied itself closely with the AWU in Queensland, contributing dozens of workers and security personnel to the government-funded Centenary Bridge upgrade in Brisbane. Host's director Gary Samuel has recently fallen out dramatically with the AWU over hotly disputed claims of underpayment of workers. But until last year, Host promoted itself boldly as the AWU's preferred labour hire company across the nation, helping it win an important contract with Centenary Bridge's key contractor, BMD Group. That deal partly involved providing security against intimidation tactics carried out by the CFMEU on the project. BMD declined to comment, but this masthead's investigation has confirmed that a security subcontractor used by Host to help do this engaged several high-ranking Comancheros, including the feared bikie group's national president, Bemir Saracevic, to intimidate CFMEU figures in Brisbane last year. While there is no suggestion that Samuel himself was involved in the Comanchero standover, he has a history of underworld relationships. Sources close to Samuel have confirmed he met Saracevic on multiple occasions, having employed one of the bikie boss's close friends as a Host adviser and worker. Royal commission records reveal that in 2011, Samuel advised a building firm owned by Mick Gatto and his fellow underworld identity Mat Tomas (both Tomas and Gatto achieved notoriety by beating separate murder charges). Samuel later went into a failed business venture with Tomas and also ran the Victorian operations of the now-deceased labour hire king Kevin McHugh, whom federal police charged in 2020 with money laundering offences and tax fraud. Loading Samuel is also close to convicted drug trafficker turned businessman Michael La Verde, who married into a prominent Calabrian mafia family and has a host of organised crime connections. La Verde claims on LinkedIn to be involved in Samuel's Host Group, although it is understood this is limited to Samuel providing his friend an email address. Samuel declined to answer specific questions but in a statement said it was 'important to acknowledge the ongoing rivalry between the CFMEU and the AWU' and that 'certain factions of the CFMEU have been linked to organised crime'. 'Our company is law-abiding and has no link to organised crime,' he said. The AWU is now rethinking its backing of the firm at the wind farm and the Centenary Bridge. Quizzed about Host, Hayden conceded the union failed to undertake thorough due diligence of labour hire firms it has supported with EBAs and other union backing. He said the union would lift its game but also urged federal and state governments to do more to weed out sinister players in the industry. Hayden said one vital reform the Albanese government could back was banning labour hire on government-funded projects. 'I think any project that the government are putting taxpayers' money into should be direct employment,' he said. A Victorian government spokesperson said it was 'eradicating the rotten culture' in the construction industry, including through the introduction of new powers for the Labour Hire Authority. Federal Workplace Relations minister Amanda Rishworth said the government was finalising a blueprint to improve the industry and was working on the implementation of a new labour hire system.
Sydney Morning Herald
12-06-2025
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Not to be messed with': Criminals recruited for country's biggest wind farm
When Keys arrived at the wind farm, west of Melbourne, as the AWU's chief delegate, he was determined not to let history repeat. According to project insiders, he began cultivating people who could keep the CFMEU at bay. Among them was ex-AFL player Billy Nicholls, who in 2015 was sentenced to 11 years' jail for shooting two men in their legs over drug disputes. Both victims survived, and Nicholls was convicted of intentionally causing serious his arrest, the former Hawthorn and Richmond player's life had become consumed by ice and a descent into the underworld. Keys told supporters Nicholls had not only left jail a reformed man, but with a tough-guy reputation that ensured the CFMEU had earmarked him to join its growing list of criminals-turned-union reps. Keys got in first, appointing Nicholls his new AWU wind farm deputy delegate. Nicholls would in turn bring his own hard men to the wind farm, proposing as a delegate an ex-Geelong bikie and boxer called Brad Azzopardi, who had been released from prison after being jailed for a dangerous driving incident that left a man dead. Wiser heads in the AWU intervened and Azzopardi, who has a 1 per cent bikie tattoo on his head, was instead given a support job on the wind farm. Nicholls also arranged for ex-bikie Jonny Walker, who served eight years in jail for manslaughter over the fatal bashing of a man in a bikie clubhouse, to get work at the wind farm after the CFMEU turfed Walker amid a bikie cleanout in the wake of the Building Bad scandal in July 2024. Along with hard men, Keys and his deputy were also assembling a group of staunch AWU companies capable of withstanding the CFMEU's pressure and heavy connections. Project sources said 24-7 would come to stand out. Workers from rival labour hire firms were pushed onto its books and 24-7 began promoting, through its website, its achievement in supplying 'approximately 50 skilled people … to one of the largest renewable wind farm projects in the world', as well as its 'close working relationships with industry stakeholders, including unions'. When project and union insiders queried why Keys appeared so enamoured with the labour hire company, despite its lack of obvious civil construction experience or AWU history, they became concerned it was because of the whispers that 24-7 had both gangland and CFMEU protection. When first approached by this masthead a fortnight ago, Keys said he had no knowledge of the firm's criminal links, or of any person called Bassem. He said 24-7 involved only 'two girl directors and the operations manager' and that he had 'never met a guy' called Bassem. Keys subsequently refused to answer further questions on the record, despite repeated attempts by this masthead to quiz him. But photos uncovered by this masthead show Keys, Nicholls and a third AWU delegate being hosted by 24-7 at the Collingwood AFL President's Lunch at the MCG on the day the Building Bad scandal broke last July. In the photos, there is no sign of the firm's female directors. Rather, the AWU trio are snapped at the 24-7 table posing with two brothers, Bassem and Osama Elsayed, along with a third man, Jarrod Hennig. Bassem is a convicted criminal who was accused in a September 2017 bail hearing by a Victoria Police special taskforce of hiring a violent criminal to bribe a grandmother preparing to testify that his brother Osama had shoved a gun in her son's mouth over a drug debt. A detective told the bail hearing of her concerns about Bassem's 'associations with organised crime' and how phone taps had captured him and his younger brother talking about how the violent criminal would be 'taking care of it'. Loading 'They have a conversation, laughing in regards to how loose … [the standover man] is and they know that he has … [previously] murdered someone,' the court heard. The court also heard allegations Bassem had separately extorted an associate over a $100,000 business loan, texting the victim: 'I hope Allah burns you in hell you thief' and allegedly hiring a standover man who threatened to 'rape' the debtor's family. After the victim retracted the most serious allegations from his statement, Bassem was sentenced in 2019 to six months' jail and a 12-month community corrections order. The conviction added to a criminal rap sheet that already included 'offences of violence, dishonesty, firearm, driving and drug offences' and which Victorian Supreme Court judge Rita Zammit described as 'significant'. Osama was, in August 2019, separately jailed for three years and four months for his role in a drug trafficking syndicate and for separate charges of robbery and recklessly causing injury. This drug syndicate was led by the third man photographed at the MCG lunch, Jarrod Hennig, who was jailed for eight years on multiple counts of drug trafficking. Industry, underworld and police sources, along with corporate and court records, reveal Hennig's middle name to be Morgan. He is the 'Jarrod Morgan' whose signature appears on AWU enterprise bargaining agreements secured by 24-7 in 2023 and 2024. Hennig is also married to Rebecca Reed, who signed off on the same documents as 24-7's director. Her co-director, Kristina Kuzmanovska, is Bassem Elsayed's wife. Osama Elsayed also appears to have been involved in the 24-7 group, creating a business called 24-7 Waterproofing in 2024 with fellow convicted drug trafficker Mohsen Mehrijafarloo. In January 2025, 24-7 Labour moved its registered office to a new Northcote business address. On the same day, Osama moved another of his businesses to the same registered office. The address is the office of accountant Charles Pellegrino, who for years has handled the finances of the CFMEU-backed gangland figures Mick Gatto and John Khoury. Pellegrino's Northcote office was raided in March by a federal police team investigating payments to Pellegrino's companies that were allegedly intended for Gatto, Khoury and other construction industry or union players. No charges have been laid. There is no suggestion the Elsayed brothers are the targets of that federal police operation. But they have their own strong links to the CFMEU. A character referee for Bassem at his 2017 bail hearing was ex-kickboxer and bouncer Chris Chrisopoulidis, who told the judge he was 'good friends' with Bassem. Chrisopoulidis would go on to become one of the CFMEU organisers who confronted Keys on the West Gate project. Bassem's wife, Kristina, is also a 50 per cent shareholder of a construction firm which gained a CFMEU enterprise bargaining agreement in 2021. Her co-owner of that business is builder Thomas Chillico, who is facing criminal charges for allegedly bribing a public official to gain construction permits. In a statement, Rebecca Reed said 24-7 'has no knowledge of or involvement with organised crime at all and is in all respects a well-run small family business. Loading 'If anyone has made allegations that 24-7 … is in any way involved with organised crime, those allegations are false,' she wrote. She said that while the company took a 'progressive approach to ex-offenders', Bassem had no 'formal involvement' with her firm. Reed did not answer several specific questions, or respond to further requests. Asked about whether he knew of 24-7 ties to any criminals such as Bassem, AWU secretary Ronnie Hayden said he had 'no idea who any of these people are'. 'When 24-7 came to us … Jared [sic] came with two women, Rebecca and Kristina,' he said. Hayden stressed he had never authorised the AWU to give preferential treatment to any labour hire firm. He conceded it was possible Keys had 'favoured' 24-7 because of concerns other labour hire firms were not giving the AWU the chance to recruit their workers as union members. 'I understand Johnny was pissed off with the labour hire companies that had done that,' he said. Before 24-7 was engaged at Golden Plains, there was the Host Group. It not only supplied multiple workers to the wind farm project but allied itself closely with the AWU in Queensland, contributing dozens of workers and security personnel to the government-funded Centenary Bridge upgrade in Brisbane. Host's director Gary Samuel has recently fallen out dramatically with the AWU over hotly disputed claims of underpayment of workers. But until last year, Host promoted itself boldly as the AWU's preferred labour hire company across the nation, helping it win an important contract with Centenary Bridge's key contractor, BMD Group. That deal partly involved providing security against intimidation tactics carried out by the CFMEU on the project. BMD declined to comment, but this masthead's investigation has confirmed that a security subcontractor used by Host to help do this engaged several high-ranking Comancheros, including the feared bikie group's national president, Bemir Saracevic, to intimidate CFMEU figures in Brisbane last year. While there is no suggestion that Samuel himself was involved in the Comanchero standover, he has a history of underworld relationships. Sources close to Samuel have confirmed he met Saracevic on multiple occasions, having employed one of the bikie boss's close friends as a Host adviser and worker. Royal commission records reveal that in 2011, Samuel advised a building firm owned by Mick Gatto and his fellow underworld identity Mat Tomas (both Tomas and Gatto achieved notoriety by beating separate murder charges). Samuel later went into a failed business venture with Tomas and also ran the Victorian operations of the now-deceased labour hire king Kevin McHugh, whom federal police charged in 2020 with money laundering offences and tax fraud. Loading Samuel is also close to convicted drug trafficker turned businessman Michael La Verde, who married into a prominent Calabrian mafia family and has a host of organised crime connections. La Verde claims on LinkedIn to be involved in Samuel's Host Group, although it is understood this is limited to Samuel providing his friend an email address. Samuel declined to answer specific questions but in a statement said it was 'important to acknowledge the ongoing rivalry between the CFMEU and the AWU' and that 'certain factions of the CFMEU have been linked to organised crime'. 'Our company is law-abiding and has no link to organised crime,' he said. The AWU is now rethinking its backing of the firm at the wind farm and the Centenary Bridge. Quizzed about Host, Hayden conceded the union failed to undertake thorough due diligence of labour hire firms it has supported with EBAs and other union backing. He said the union would lift its game but also urged federal and state governments to do more to weed out sinister players in the industry. Hayden said one vital reform the Albanese government could back was banning labour hire on government-funded projects. 'I think any project that the government are putting taxpayers' money into should be direct employment,' he said. A Victorian government spokesperson said it was 'eradicating the rotten culture' in the construction industry, including through the introduction of new powers for the Labour Hire Authority. Federal Workplace Relations minister Amanda Rishworth said the government was finalising a blueprint to improve the industry and was working on the implementation of a new labour hire system.
The Age
01-06-2025
- The Age
‘Got to stand your ground': Ex-bikie blasts former CFMEU bosses
When feared ex-bikie enforcer Jonny 'Two Guns' Walker discovered himself suddenly persona non grata among the union bosses he once called 'brother', one word sprang to mind. Betrayal. The way the convicted criminal and champion boxer saw it, CFMEU chiefs previously eager to bestow the union's industrial might on hard gangland types like him were now sacrificing them to save their own skins. Adding insult to injury was the posturing of outgoing union bosses like John Setka, who posted photos getting a bikie-style tattoo around his neck after abandoning his post as Victorian secretary. Setka quit on the eve of the Building Bad investigation breaking – which exposed underworld infiltration of the union – hoping his departure would suppress the scandal. 'I would say he's try-hard,' Walker says of Setka. 'The tattoo's probably a bit much, isn't it? When you're stepping away? It's like leaving a biker club and getting a tattoo on the next day. Doesn't make much sense.' If Setka hoped to rule from afar while working on as industry consultant, he failed miserably. His acolytes in the CFMEU's executive ranks were sacked around the country and the union plunged into administration. Walker's beef is with the way these now ex-union bosses turned on men like him. Having placed Walker, alongside other former and serving bikie bosses, in positions of union power and influence on the biggest commercial construction and Allan government projects in Victoria, he says they were owed a measure of support. 'Obviously, the pressure got too much,' says Walker. 'End of the day, we shouldn't be pushed over because the government thinks I shouldn't be on a Big Build job. It was just a witch hunt … to break down a powerful union.' Walker, who was jailed for manslaughter over a fatal bashing in a bikie clubhouse, derides these now ex-union bosses as plastic gangsters. 'Do they think they're gangsters? Maybe at home after they've watched The Godfather or something a couple of times,' he says. Where Walker and some of the exiled union bosses may agree is the insistence that men of his ilk can rightly work as CFMEU health and safety representatives or organisers. Walker insists that after serving his eight years' jail — for his role in a bashing that began over a dispute over a dog called 'Trouble' — and severing ties with the Bandidos, for whom he served as club enforcer or sergeant-at-arms, his background as a tradesman and passion for unionism and upholding building industry safety made him an ideal CFMEU workplace health delegate. 'I understand people can raise eyebrows, but my knowledge of the construction site was much more than just bashing someone to death in the clubhouse,' he says. Loading 'I was never hired because I was an ex-Bandido. I was never hired because I was an ex-boxer. I was hired off a resume as a fitter and turner by trade. 'I'd worked since I was 14 to 30 years old, ended up in trouble, ended up in jail. But the truth is, I'd done all my courses, OH&S courses.' It's true Walker can be charming when he tries. He stresses he's now a family man who cares for his teenage son and the two young children of his new partner, Jess. Workers and bosses on the Big Build Hurstbridge Rail Upgrade project where Walker worked as a union delegate also say he never threatened them with violence or asked for a bribe. And yet if Walker is anything, it's scary. It's not just his past or unflinching disposition. He oozes menace. His Two Guns nickname comes from his boxing career where he has fought more than 100 rounds. Before his exclusive interview with this masthead and 60 Minutes, Walker had repeatedly taken to social media to call this reporter a 'dog'. When Walker was identified on national television as one of a host of ex and serving bikies, including Bandidos, Rebels, Mongols, and Hells Angels, who had been parachuted by the CFMEU into powerful well-paid delegate roles, he posted an Instagram threat of violence directed towards me. In the interview, Walker insisted this was justified because the public scrutiny was unjust – especially claims by the CFMEU administration's chief investigator, Geoffrey Watson, SC, that Walker, and other ex and serving bikies, were recruited by union bosses as muscle and as tools for warring CFMEU factions. 'You got on national TV with Geoffrey Watson, ran my name into the mud,' he said. 'So I run my life a little bit like a union. I stand up for what's right, so anyone gets on TV and you know, puts me down. You know what I mean? That's, at the time, that's how I felt.' Pushed about whether his criminal record of extreme violence should have ruled him out as a union health and safety representative on a government project, Walker responds: 'Well, if you were a boss, would you do things unsafe if I come told you not to?' Loading Asked about whether it was appropriate for a violent and erratic criminal linked to the Rebels to be given a job on the Big Build (this particular bikie figure got his job because his uncle held a senior union position), Walker says: 'Well, that bloke there worked alongside me and he was damn good. He's done his job to exactly how he had to do it.' Walker was, by all accounts (this masthead spoke to eight Hurstbridge project workers about Walker on the condition of anonymity) the nicest of a three-man roving CFMEU delegate team on the project. If Walker is reformed, his other two health and safety representatives are not. Before they, too, were sacked, one was juggling his union duties with his role as a bikie-gang affiliated standover man accused of threatening subcontractors and others with violence. The third CFMEU delegate on the Hurstbridge Line Project was pushed out of the union for allegedly bashing a fellow union delegate with a metal pipe. Walker will not say an ill word about these two former comrades. Asked about the alleged bashing, Walker points out it did not happen on a work site, before querying whether it happened at all (the assault is allegedly caught on CCTV). Pressed about whether violence should be condemned wherever it occurs, Walker offers this: 'Well, if someone breaks into my house, they're gonna get, they're gonna get a rude awakening, aren't they?' Loading In contrast with Watson, Walker sees no pattern in the influx of bikie gang-linked figures into the union. Instead, he sees hard men with an ability to hold unreasonable bosses to account and protect workers. 'You don't need an ex-biker or an ex-boxer there. You need a man that's gonna stand on his own two feet and know right from wrong,' he says. Walker stands largely alone in his defence of ex-gangland figures being appointed as union delegates. Even his strongest supporters in the union privately say that while Walker may well be genuinely committed to reform, and also made strides in promoting a program for young offenders on the Big Build, the union ultimately set him up to fail by giving him a job as a health and safety delegate. 'They should have put him on the tools for a few years. Maybe then you look at a delegate's role,' says one experienced union insider. 'But the [now sacked union] bosses didn't want Walker and the other boys [ex-bikies] as genuine delegates. They wanted to build crews of tough guys for their own powerbases and no one thought about what would happen if anyone started asking questions.' What happened next is now part of Australian industrial and political history, albeit one that is still being written. Walker was not only forced off the Big Build but then from a non-union role secured for him by the Australian Workers Union on a major wind farm project. The construction industry is undergoing once-in-a-generation reform. The state government last year introduced laws it said would prevent bikies from working on its sites. Federal and state police are investigating organised crime links to the CFMEU and wider building sector, but it's unclear if authorities have the capacity to confront the problems, as highlighted by a spate of recent unsolved firebombings. The union's administrator, Mark Irving, is attempting to rebuild a new corruption-free industrial force, but it's slow work that is being constantly undermined by forces inside and out of the CFMEU. While Setka and his senior union cronies are gone from their jobs, they are still wielding influence from the sidelines. This masthead and 60 Minutes has confirmed that several influential union organisers who played a role in recruiting bikies still work for Irving. They include Paul Tzimas, a previous promoter of certain Mongols bikie heavies. Tzimas didn't comment when contacted and it's unclear if he was merely following orders from others when he pushed bikie gang-linked figures onto companies. If Walker remains a lone public voice defending the appointment of men like him to union delegate roles, he is one of many, from the premier down, now denouncing the conduct of the ex-union chiefs who put them there in the first place. These critics may not agree on much, save for the view that whatever political and factional machinations were at play, it was the self-interest and ego of ex-CFMEU leaders that poisoned a once proud and powerful union. 'I think they betrayed themself,' Walker says. 'They were definitely more worried about themselves than us.'
