CFMEU inquiry as it happened: Probe unearths details from key firm behind Cross River Rail

“It wasn’t put to us … that was the reason they were attending. It’s not to say it wasn’t the reason they were attending.”

Johnson agrees that the authority’s role started as an observer but morphed into one of a facilitator or mediator, though he says he viewed Scott Gartrell as more of a “government person”.

He agrees that the role of a mediator or facilitator is to sometimes identify points of contention, offer suggestions and maybe even push parties to make concessions.

Johnson accepts there was no compulsion to agree to anything, and that the authority’s presence could have been of benefit for CPB to help demonstrate its best endeavours to reach an agreement – even if this was ultimately not possible.

Johnson says that while the government felt that best practice principles was a “de facto” way of getting a Queen’s Wharf-type agreement or conditions, he accepts that “wasn’t the position of the DA [delivery authority]”.

O’Brien ends his cross-examination, and the inquiry adjourns until April 14.

Ultimately, 15 resumes for the safety representatives were sent through by the CFMEU – which Johnson understood to have been picked out by since ousted assistant state secretary Jade Ingham – for onboarding processes including suitability checks.

Johnson concedes that despite the risks associated with this, and what occurred after in terms of further disruption to work through safety representatives, “we had to live with that in order to get the job back”.

“I didn’t like it, but this was the most pragmatic way forward,” he says. “We held them to account, initially, not as strongly as I would have liked, but in time … we tightened up.”

This included some disciplinary action, Johnson says, and says he wasn’t aware at the time that any of the people put forward had dangerous criminal records.

“I think probably we’d make the same decision again,” he says. And with that, counsel assisting the inquiry Edward Gisonda SC finishes up taking evidence from Johnson.

The following day, CFMEU and Electrical Trades Union figures were at the project gates which had been locked with chains and again preventing, and intimidating, workers from entering.

By July 28, Johnson was unsure how long the situation would continue, and called a meeting he led with all unions including the CFMEU, ETU, Australian Workers’ Union and representatives from the plumbers and manufacturing unions.

Gartrell is said to have stated that Trad had called him to ask if the deal could be pushed over the line.

After Johnson wrote to delivery authority boss Graeme Newton that night to lay out how he believed the contractors had adhered to best practice principles, his notes from a 6.30am meeting the following morning with Martyn-Jones and Gartrell Trad had “pulled” the deal, which he described as meaning believed would not be finalised by June 30.

This “stalemate” is then left with the delivery authority representatives, before a 9.40am meeting in which an additional letter was presented to Johnson’s team for signing.

Johnson says this was then later sent to him, and the inquiry is shown this came in a bundle of documents via Martyn-Jones using an “obviously unusual” Hotmail email address.

This letter included taking “relevant clauses for the agreement from the Queen’s Wharf enterprise agreement” and the issuing of a “subcontractor briefing pack to the market, including a signed copy of the agreement” based on the Queen’s Wharf subcontractor briefing pack.

Johnson says while his team had agreed that if it could accommodate clauses from the Queen’s Wharf agreement, it would, but not further than that given the view that this was an attempted workaround of the federal building code.

That was “going to be unacceptable to us”, he says, though Queen’s Wharf base pay rates were ultimately agreed to.

“By that time, we figured that unless we conceded to those rates of pay, we were going to get nowhere. So we did that,” Johnson says. The deal is ultimately struck.

“Regardless of whether the government sought to write into the contract that we must – which is where they were going – we must have an agreement in place before we start work, now that just added to our risk profile.

“It probably swayed the negotiating balance. If people were aware that we had to have that agreement in place before we could start … people could just hold out, so we weren’t prepared to sign up for that, and we never did, and we suggested that if the government wanted that type of clause in there, that they would need to share that risk with us.”

Johnson says some of the meetings were short because of the unions’ insistence on a single agreement, modelled on Queen’s Wharf, “because we weren’t willing to move”.

But he says there was significant interest from his bosses to close the deal before June 30.

“At the same time, the message coming from the government through the DA [Cross River Rail Delivery Authority] was that you’re not going to get a deal unless you can demonstrate that you’ve complied with ‘best practice principles’, in their terminology, meaning you have an agreement in place, or you can demonstrate to us that … best endeavours has been applied in order to get an agreement.”

Gisonda walks the inquiry through some of the early pages of Johnson’s 415-page bundle of evidence, and detail of the agreements struck by the workforce after the expiry of the initial deals with the Australian Workers’ Union alone.

These later deals, in late 2024 and early 2025, came after a period of protected industrial action on the project, which Cross River Rail Delivery Authority chief executive Graeme Newton has in part attributed to increased costs and delays.

“This is what’s so vexing for investors and proponents of very expensive infrastructure,” Commissioner Stuart Wood, AM KC, says of the fact such deals do not span the entire life of a project.

“[In the] middle of a project, when you need all hands on deck, you can subject to protected action … when you might be paying two or three times the award in the original agreement anyway.”