Rotting from the top, butchered from the middle: Corruption fighter’s comedy of errors

By his own admission, corruption fighter Geoffrey Watson, SC, could be a bit better at life.

During his appearance at Queensland’s commission of inquiry into the CFMEU on Wednesday morning, Watson turned on the self-deprecation as he dealt with the fallout of this masthead’s reporting that politically explosive sections were removed from his report on corruption within the union.

Sworn in about six hours after that bombshell news story broke, Watson recounted a comedy of errors: looming deadlines, missed housewarming parties, and wrong email addresses.

At the direction of CFMEU administrator Mark Irving, Watson’s 18-month Rotting from the Top report omitted an entire section blasting the Victorian Labor government for turning a blind eye to CFMEU graft and organised crime on worksites, at a $15 billion cost to taxpayers.

Watson, a man who has himself successfully spearheaded numerous high profile public inquiries into corruption over a storied career, was appointed by Irving to weed out criminal elements within the union’s ranks, appeared miffed at its exclusion.

“You wouldn’t believe this by looking at me, but I am a very bad-tempered, petulant person … and when I say petulant, I mean I kept it together,” he said.

“I was really, actually, quite angry.”

Watson said he was told the omitted sections fell outside the terms of reference, an explanation for which he had some disdain.

“You know, don’t bury the lead – the journos are like that,” he said, with a glance towards the rows of media watching the inquiry at Brisbane Magistrates Court.

“I was actually thinking this was something so important that it needed to be said upfront.”

The commission heard the omissions were not the only changes to the Rotting From the Top report, tabled in the Brisbane court on Wednesday.

Senior counsel assisting the commission, Mark Costello: “The original title of your report was Something Has To Change.”

Watson: “Which is very ordinary, very basic.”

Costello: “That wasn’t an invitation to have your report edited?”

Watson (laughing): “No [pause]. Well, maybe subliminally.”

That draft was delivered to Irving by about December 1, Watson said, but not before he sent the highly sensitive report to the wrong email address.

“Eventually, I got it right,” he said. “I’m pretty hopeless with these sorts of things.”

Watson said he became aware of the changes about 5pm on the Wednesday before Australia Day, after he was summonsed to produce a copy of the report to the commission.

“When I looked at it, I was shattered,” he said.

“What had happened was people have made changes in it, including the excellent change about the title. I’m not saying these things were wrong, they may have been correcting typos or removing split infinitives and the like, I don’t know, but it meant that the paragraph numbers were all wonky and the fonts were all changed, even sometimes mid-paragraph. Footnotes had been left without numbers.

“The whole thing had been butchered in an editing sense.”

Irving gave Watson a deadline of January 27 to provide an updated version of the document for the commission.

“By golly, it was work, and it was on the Australia Day weekend,” he said.

“I’m not trying to paint myself as a victim, but I was supposed to go to a housewarming that day.

“I had to send them a message saying I couldn’t come because we had to finish it to get it through to the administration so that it could be provided to the commission by the 27th.”

Irving had deemed the government response outside his terms of reference – a decision Watson ultimately accepted to maintain his statutory immunity. Mick Gatto, a well-known underworld figure once charged with murder after shooting a hitman in a Melbourne restaurant, had already threatened to sue Watson for defaming his character, Watson revealed.

“One of the defences is that I was actually under a direction and thus entitled to the derivative statutory immunity,” he said.

It wasn’t the only Watson-produced report for which the author had some regrets.

A report into the CFMEU’s payment of legal expenses of NSW divisional branch secretary Darren Greenfield and his son, assistant secretary Michael Greenfield, also attracted his ire.

“I have re-read it recently, commissioner, and I cannot believe how boring it is,” he said.

“It’s real dishwater stuff. I don’t know what got into me. I was far too mild, because I can remember at the time being very shocked.

“And when I re-read the interim report, I thought, ‘wow, I really wasn’t saying what I truly felt’.”

But despite his angst with the edits, Watson was at pains to bury the hatchet with Irving following calls for his removal from the federal opposition.

“I just looked at my telephone and saw something about somebody calling for the resignation or dismissal of Mark Irving,” he said, following a 20-minute adjournment.

“I just want to say I might have said some harsh things ... [but] they would be mad to get rid of Mark Irving.”

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