CFMEU inquiry calls for details on potential Gatto-linked traffic firm

Queensland’s CFMEU inquiry is investigating a Gold Coast traffic management company over potential links with Melbourne underworld identity Mick Gatto.

Inquiry figures held an unusual media conference outside the company’s address on Wednesday morning, urging anyone with information to come forward.

Counsel assisting the inquiry Patrick Wheelahan said M1 Traffic Control Queensland appeared to have recently begun operations in the state.

The firm had “similar features” to the M Group traffic control model documented by the CFMEU administration’s former corruption-busting barrister, Geoffrey Watson.

“The corporate structure in the ASIC records for M1 Traffic Control QLD shows similar features to those Watson SC documented: a Paragalli as director, a company with the name of Portia Nominees as a shareholder, and all shares held non-beneficially,” Wheelehan said.

“We will investigate any information we are given regarding the establishment of M1 Traffic Control Queensland Pty Ltd in Queensland and those it does business with,” he added.

The inquiry figures said no findings had been made, and they were not suggesting who owned the company or that it had engaged in any misconduct. The company denied wrongdoing and said it had not previously been contacted by either Watson or the inquiry.

Watson’s recent report into the Victorian branch of the CFMEU, which was released publicly by the inquiry, described the union’s insistence that M Group companies be used for work, under implicit or explicit threat of industrial disruption.

While noting Gatto denied he owned the companies, Watson has described this as “transparently false” and involving crude attempts to conceal his involvement. Gatto has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and derided Watson’s findings publicly.

“The companies were fronted by two men, Tony Paragalli and Michael Portia, who were described by Watson SC as dummy directors,” Wheelahan said.

“It would be remiss of us not to investigate, on the back of [Watson’s] report, that one of the companies that he says is linked to Mick Gatto now sets up in Queensland, because Queensland does not want to end up like Victoria.”

In material provided to media, the inquiry presented LinkedIn posts from the firm – trading as the Melbourne-headquartered M1 Traffic and Labour – and its Queensland director Jordan Paragalli announcing the launch of its operations in the state last month.

M1 Traffic Control is licensed by Queensland regulators as a labour hire operator.

In one post, Paragalli names Mr Traffic Hire – with which the firm shares its Molendinar industrial estate premises – as “our trusted suppliers”, and thanks its managing director, Jamie Haitas.

Mr Traffic’s website features a post detailing its expansion into Queensland from Victoria in September last year.

No representative of either company authorised to speak to the media was present at the site on Wednesday at the time of the inquiry’s media conference. Mr Traffic was contacted for comment.

In a phone interview with this masthead, M1 director Tony Paragalli said the firm launched operations in Queensland two weeks ago – assisted by Mr Traffic Hire, which helped with the premises and which hires utes to M1.

Paragalli disputed “every single one” of the allegations made by Watson in his report, and the suggestions made by the inquiry on Wednesday.

“At no point did anyone [Watson or the inquiry] ring us to ask about any of the facts,” he said, adding that if they had, he would have welcomed them to Melbourne to interview staff and look through his books.

“The fact that he’s [inquiry commissioner Stuart Wood] turned up, now we’re guilty,” he said. “We are an open book. We’ve got no work up there, we’ve got nothing … and it’s not a CFMEU company, it’s a non-union company.”

Paragalli said Gatto acted as an industrial relations mediator for many companies in Melbourne, and his engagement with M1 was a “straight-up business arrangement – he charges us $30,000 a year”.

“Were a traffic management company. The only reason we get the traffic work is because there’s only about three companies that have the equipment to do the big jobs.

“If we were really a front, why would we pay off the [Australian Tax Office] debt? We’d just shut the business down.”

Wood had said at his media conference, in which only Wheelahan took questions, that the inquiry was still in an “investigative stage” and would “afford procedural fairness to any person or entity whose conduct is under examination”.

Asked if such fairness had been extended to the companies the pair were speaking in front of on Wednesday, Wheelahan said that would happen once there was an “adverse allegation against somebody … these are simply allegations”.

“There will be procedural fairness if there’s to be any allegation that we think will be substantiated,” he said, noting the inquiry could use its powers to compel Gatto to give evidence “if the investigation leads down that train of inquiry”.

Wheelahan said he believed it was not unusual for the inquiry to hold such a media event, noting the famed Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption did so numerous times.

He would not be drawn directly on whether the extensive public hearing, scheduled to run until mid-June, might require an extension to the final reporting date of July 31.

“The inquiries we have been making, and investigations, have uncovered more than we expected. So if we’re unable to complete the inquiry by July, it’s a matter for the commissioner to make an application … to the premier to seek an extension,” Wheelahan said.

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