We’re over time and counsel assisting Patrick Wheelahan has only just finished taking Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl through her main evidence.

Lawyers for the CFMEU administration say they would prefer to cross-examine Schinnerl at a later date.

Wheelahan says under the inquiry rules he doesn’t believe applications by lawyers for ousted CFMEU leaders Michael Ravbar and Jade Ingham to cross-examine Schinnerl should be granted until the former officials have given sworn statements of their own responding to allegations against them.

Commissioner Stuart Wood ends proceedings for the day, noting that the inquiry has still had no luck finding court space for more than four weeks next year. As it stands at close of play today, public hearings will return in early February.

Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl told the inquiry of a CFMEU plot to take control of her union, and a solution to hostilities proposed by federal CFMEU secretary Zach Smith.

Schinnerl said that in May this year, then-CFMEU administration state executive officer Travis O’Brien confirmed what “we had been hearing … for some time”.

“I put it to him and he did confirm that it was true,” she said.

This involved a rumour that, since late 2024, some in the CFMEU have or had a well-established and funded plan to take over the AWU at a future election.

CFMEU members who also held AWU membership were said to have been planning to infiltrate the organisation, with more than $1 million allocated for the plan.

Schinnerl said she was unsure how the money had been raised and where it might be held.

She also outlined conversations she had been told about between Smith and federal AWU leadership regarding violence and threats from the CFMEU.

In those, Smith is said to have repeatedly floated a resolution o the issues could be a demarcation agreement around union coverage.

“Quite frankly I think that proves what I suspected all along. That this exercise … has been entirely about coverage,” Schinnerl says.

Queensland’s key civil construction union repeatedly raised concerns with public servants and former Labor ministers about the legality of the state’s major infrastructure procurement policies.

Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl is walking the inquiry through various emails and meetings from early 2021 about the now squashed union-backed entitlements in the building sector, known as Best Practice Industry Conditions.

Schinnerl said she first warned then ministers Mark Bailey and Mick de Brenni in March of that year that a planned addition to the transport department-specific policy was in “conflict” with federal laws.

This related to the third stage of the Gold Coast light rail and the ability the changes could give unions such as the CFMEU to enter agreements where they did not have membership coverage.

“I issued a warning that I believed the government was on tenuous grounds,” Schinnerl said.

The ministers said they had “Crown law advice and their strategy was sound”.

Schinnerl asked for that advice, but it was not provided. She said Bailey indicated “that the government doesn’t have any interest in getting involved in union turf wars”.

She raised similar concerns about the policy impact on civil construction projects with heads of various state government departments.

Despite the AWU getting the agreements for the earlier light rail stages with contractor John Holland, the third stage agreement was eventually made with the CFMEU.

Schinnerl said prior to this, one of the firm’s representatives, Trent Smith, told her the pressure from the CFMEU on the separate non-civil building side of business was too great.

The inquiry has now moved on to the highly publicised entitlements backed by the union known as best practice industry conditions (BPIC) or, to its more vocal critics, the “CFMEU tax”.

Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl outlines her concern that the agreements were “an attempt to use government policy process to increase [CFMEU] coverage”.

Despite raising this, she said her predecessor was told the policies were “continuing with or without the AWU”.

“They were doing so [based] on what their erroneous view of what their coverage was,” she said.

Schinnerl was asked whether the CFMEU could only do this if they had more influence over the government than other unions.

“I believe they did,” she said.

Schinnerl says a state government consultant on the process of one, a CFMEU precursor union member Randall Fuller, had told her ousted leader Michael Ravbar got him the job.

Ousted CFMEU assistant state secretary Jade Ingham had overarching control over the union’s controversial “youth crew”, the inquiry hears.

Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl says while she has no evidence necessarily to back this up, it was “well known”.

“He [Ingham] would issue directions and they would follow,” Schinnerl told the inquiry.

A desk attendant at Queensland police headquarters told two key union leaders not to sign in to a meeting with top brass in mid-2024 about the escalating hostility from the CFMEU to the Australian Workers Union.

AWU state secretary Stacey Schinnerl is telling the inquiry of the meeting she attended with Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Jacqueline King – who gave some evidence of this on Tuesday.

On arrival at the Brisbane Roma Street office, Schinnerl says they were told at the front desk “no no no, don’t sign in” before a phone call was made and someone from Commissioner Steve Gollschewski’s office came to collect them.

Schinnerl says she outlined years of trouble over a roughly 30-minute informal meeting also attended by Deputy Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon – who was taking notes.

She says while sharing their concerns, Scanlon spoke most from the police side and ended the meeting saying she would “make enquiries” and get back to them after seeming “genuinely engaged”.

Scanlon never did, Schinnerl says. The next Schinnerl heard from Scanlon was a “check in” text message in July this year, about the time the inquiry was announced.

The inquiry will seek access to all previous versions of a flawed agreement between police and the state’s industrial relations office to figure out when and why changes were made.

Commissioner Stuart Wood has asked counsel assisting Patrick Wheelahan to look into this to help the inquiry get to the bottom of it.

Australian Workers Union state secretary Stacey Schinnerl says she believes particularly sections and references to the state-registered CFMEU were a “do-around” to enable officials without federal workplace entry permits to access sites.

“What is contemplated here is not actually, practically possible,” Schinnerl says.