I am a retired Construction Forestry Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) member and a former union health and safety trainer for nearly 20 years and I am horrified that Geoffrey Watson’s February 11 report to the ongoing Queensland Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU and Misconduct in the Construction Industry is being taken seriously.

The allegations sound bad but hard evidence of the union’s criminality is missing in his Rotting from the Top: the CFMEU in Victoria During the Setka Era.

It is also clear that what originally began as a union investigation into the CFMEU in Melbourne, in July 2024, has now been turned into a propaganda piece for an inquiry in another state.

The union’s alleged criminality is assumed to be a fact. But it is based on very few convictions, or even arrests, and rather on hearsay and guilt by association.

For instance, mainstream media’s obsession with allegedly “$15 billion” worth of corrupt payments connected to the CFMEU is not included in the report yet continues to be front page news. No one can substantiate what that figure represents, nor whose pockets it supposedly ended up in.

Yet, even the ABC continues to believe this link to the CFMEU.

Watson has not provided a balanced account of the building industry, its history and traditions. He only seems interested in pushing the idea that the CFMEU was not a trade union but rather “a crime syndicate”.

Yet this union, that represents tens of thousands of workers, helped to drive down fatality rates on job sites, Australia-wide, in just a few decades. It made building sites some of the safest in the world.

It also helped workers win significant wage rises and improved conditions, by taking collective action when necessary. This is one of the reasons why building workers left the Australian Workers Union and joined the CFMEU, because the latter tried to ensure members received similar........

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