‘Direct line to Jacinta’: CFMEU’s links to political power and organised crime probed

Former top construction union boss Joe Myles boasted of having “a direct line to Jacinta Allan’s office” during a pivotal meeting about control of a level-crossing removal project, a former union official claims.

Paul Tzimas, a former Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union organiser, told the royal commission that Myles also threatened to lobby the state government not to award the project’s builders a contract for Melbourne Airport rail during a tense meeting at the union headquarters.

The meeting on June 7, 2022 was called after the union had shut down the $110 million Gap Road level-crossing removal project in Sunbury for two days and has been a focal point for the commission in its first week of witness testimony.

Tzimas told the hearing that Myles, his boss, told two John Holland managers that if their consortium did not agree to the union’s demands – which included appointing union-favoured labour hire and traffic management firms – it could jeopardise their prospects of working on airport rail.

“There was a mention that, or words to the effect, about sort of having a ‘direct line to Jacinta Allan’s office’,” Tzimas said.

“I was probably surprised because I didn’t feel or think that as a union we had that type of influence.”

At the time, Allan was the minister responsible for the government’s substantial transport project agenda. A spokesman for Allan declined to comment.

Tzimas said it was well known that Elizabeth Doidge, who is married to Myles, was employed as the CFMEU’s political organiser and government liaison. She has previously defended the union’s relationship with the government.

Myles was sacked in mid-2024 amid the Building Bad scandal and was heavily criticised in the report of Geoffrey Watson, SC, tabled in the Queensland commission of inquiry, but in 2022 he was the CFMEU’s most senior Big Build official.

A lawyer for Myles quizzed Tzimas about aspects of his recollection, including whether he remembered Myles saying he was ill with vertigo on the day of the key meeting, but did not directly challenge his account.

Tzimas said the rail alliance was viewed by the union as having a hostile approach to industrial relations.

“The alliance’s sort of recalcitrant nature and behaviour with their approach to unions was well known ... So that would potentially be a factor that could hinder them from work, such as those projects,” he said.

The meeting lasted no more than 10 minutes, but when it was over, John Holland had accepted the union’s demands. Tzimas said his role in enforcing health and safety at Gap Road ended from that moment.

On its third day of hearings, the commission heard Tzimas had earlier played a key role enforcing the two-day work stoppage at Gap Road. The commission has heard Tzimas was one of a small handful of officials who unlawfully occupied the Gap Road site during a crucial period of occupation, and filed a series of safety-incident reports.

As Tzimas sat on a water-filled barrier, stubbornly enforcing the union’s two-day shutdown of the Gap Road level crossing removal project in June 2022, an email from criminal lawyer Sarah Pratt was forwarded to his inbox.

The email concerned Jonny “Two Guns” Walker, a former Bandidos sergeant-at-arms who had just served eight years in prison for manslaughter.

Tzimas was asked to fill in the blanks on an official union letter to the Adult Parole Board, advising it that Walker would be employed by the CFMEU on night and day shifts on an as yet unnamed Melbourne construction site.

Tzimas, who is no longer a CFMEU official and currently not working, told the hearing he helped Walker gain work on the upgrade of the City Loop.

He had never met Walker at the time he helped complete the union’s letter to the parole board, nor was he even certain Walker was a financial member, he said.

“It wasn’t uncommon to help people coming into the office, trying to get into the industry, or wanting or seeking help from the union and things like that. So I didn’t think anything was too odd about it,” he said.

The hearing also probed other connections between the Victorian construction sector, the union and organised crime, including bikies, including the use of violence and threats.

Tzimas was asked early in questioning if he had ever been attacked on site, and revealed that he once had his ankle fractured by men he believed to be bikies working for a developer, while his then-union colleague Ronnie Buckley suffered a broken eye socket and teeth, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The unidentified bikies who assaulted Tzimas and Buckley were working for the private developer of a site in Hawthorn where the violence occurred, Tzimas said.

Counsel assisting Chris Carr, SC, also read out to Tzimas a list of 11 names of men with confirmed or alleged bikie links, who had also worked for the union at different times, including Walker, Joel Leavitt, Muhammed Sayan, Jahmahl Pearson, Luke Moloney and others.

Carr asked if the union had helped these men gain roles as health and safety representatives or as union organisers, to which Tzimas agreed that it had in some cases, and that in others he could not be sure.

“One or two of those people that come to mind were already working at a particular company and existing there and had expressed an interest to be HSRs or things like that, and I believe that’s how it came about,” Tzimas said.

Soon after being assaulted on site, Tzimas learned that the Hawthorn developer had engaged underworld figure turned-industrial-negotiator Mick Gatto. The hearing was told Gatto would intervene on behalf of employers in union disputes and once offered Tzimas a gold bracelet, at a meeting on a Carlton street.

The union official refused the gift at first, but accepted it after Gatto “expressed that, especially because I refused it, that it wasn’t his way of trying to give me anything to have sway or to earn any favour”.

“He believed that he probably judged me a bit harshly, and this was an olive branch, so to speak, that he gives to people that he considers a friend, and he doesn’t want nothing for it. Obviously, me initially refusing it and him clarifying that probably made me feel a little bit better. But I never wore it,” Tzimas said.

Tzimas, a broad shouldered man dressed in a fine woollen suit, with a long and immaculately trimmed beard, was questioned about whether the officials used threats and intimidation to coerce workers on the Gap Road site to down tools.

An industrial relations note from the rail alliance, also tendered as evidence, documented an environment of intimidation on site.

“After prestart, CFMEU communicated to Wagstaff labour force that if they worked tonight there [sic] life would be made very difficult for them personally and Wagstaff as a business. Wagstaff labour communicated to RNA they did not wish to work tonight under this pressure,” it read.

“F--- you,” workers from contractors Wagstaff Piling were told when they were on site, according to evidence tendered by Carr. Tzimas did not deny the workers were abused but said it was not by him.

”That suggests that someone, at least of the four of you, were insulting or abusing the workers,” Carr suggested.

“Yeah, I can see that. I would never speak to workers that way,” he said.

“That suggests the four of you were not there out of concern for the workers, doesn’t it?” Carr said.

Tzimas said CFMEU members pay their membership to be represented on site and, although he never aimed to be hostile, “robust debates about safety” were unavoidable.

Questioning of Tzimas took up most of Wednesday’s hearing, during which he maintained all of his actions were done in the interests of worker safety, including occasions when he had breached workplace laws and been fined.

Victorian regulator WorkSafe, he said, was “fundamentally broken for working people”.

“They’re very limited on funding. They’re very limited on inspectors. They’re very limited on the inspectors’ experience when it comes to construction background,” he said.

Worksafe senior inspector Quinton Drury, who also gave evidence on Wednesday, said he had oversight of the Gap Road project, which he attended on June 8, the day after work had resumed. He did not see any CFMEU health and safety representatives on site, and found a minor safety issue with the way mesh had been placed around piling holes. The issue, which had not been raised by the CFMEU while it was occupying the Gap Road site, was rectified, he said.

Drury said he had encountered Tzimas in March 2022, and during a CFMEU stoppage on the West Gate Tunnel in 2019.

He said Tzimas was one of two union organisers occupying the slew zone of a crane, forcing works to stop.

“I made all attempts to try to engage and find out what the safety issue is, but I was met with aggression. I was unclear at the time what the safety issue was.”

Drury told the hearing he offered to discuss the safety issue in the site office, but was refused.

The union had a practice of entering work sites and identifying safety issues during time-critical stages of a project, WorkSafe chief health and safety officer Samuel Jenkin argued in his submission to the royal commission, which was tendered on Wednesday.

“Mr Jenkin indicates that another pattern that emerged from the records and that WorkSafe identified, was that issues arose with a greater degree of frequency or intensity when time-critical works were due to occur. Was that your experience also?” Drury was asked.