The inquiry’s official livestream, which wasn’t working this morning, is streaming from the Brisbane Magistrates Court this afternoon.

Already there has been an occasional break when there is mention of a person subject to a non-publication order.

After the inquiry was shown some video footage of an incident detailed in the Watson report of AWU officials being blocked by CFMEU counterparts from entering a Brisbane Metro site, proceedings have wrapped up for the day.

Among the logistical matters closing the hearing, counsel assisting Mark Costello KC has said he expected to continue with evidence from CFMEU administration investigator Geoffrey Watson SC for most of Wednesday’s hearing.

The union’s administrator, Mark Irving KC, is then expected to be called as a witness for part of the day Thursday, which has left it unclear as yet if the inquiry will be able to hear evidence from any other anticipated witnesses this week.

Proceedings will resume at 10am Brisbane time tomorrow.

Questions from counsel assisting Mark Costello KC to CFMEU administration investigator Geoffrey Watson SC have now turned to what was put to Watson as the “turf war” with the AWU, which he quipped involved a great deal more concrete than turf.

Watson’s report made specific note that some of the worst of the violence he found had been directed at the AWU, “intimidation” he noted had been continuous since Stacey Schinnerl made a joke in her speech at the 2022 state Labor Party conference.

Schinnerl had months earlier been elected as the AWU’s state secretary – the first woman to hold the role. Her joke prompted CFMEU state secretary Michael Ravbar to erupt and demand CFMEU delegates leave, which they did.

“I don’t care that Mr Ravbar or Mr Ingham will come out every day of the week and say, ‘we do a lot to encourage women’, I like to look at their actions rather than their words,” Watson told the inquiry.

“So I mean, you make your own link there, but I find it irresistible. Makes me wonder, Commissioner, I’m not just giving this as some sort of stump speech, it’s true. I wonder whether the whole thing would be a lot better off if there were a lot more women like Stacey Schinnerl in power.”

The inquiry investigating the CFMEU has been told of the power wielded by the union, whose representatives were able to order Work Health and Safety officials around.

Counsel assisting Mark Costello KC has been walking CFMEU administration investigator Geoffrey Watson SC through his concern about an inappropriate relationship between someone in the CFMEU and elements of the state’s Work Health and Safety Inspectorate.

Watson’s report makes note of a 2021 incident on a West End worksite in which a WHS inspector stepped in to tell a CFMEU organiser he could not swear at the builder’s safety representative – before being told by his boss to immediately remove himself from the site.

“Now you can’t get to the bottom of any of these [instances] without trying to get into the bottom of how the CFMEU can make a phone call and get a health and safety rep booted off your job,” Watson said.

“There is a person who was said to have had a very close relationship with another person who is a CFMEU official, and between the two of them, power was distributed in a manner so that they could order health and safety reps around.”

Watson reiterated his reluctance to look further into this, mentioned in his report, as matters around the former WHS director in question, Helen Burgess, were being investigated by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission.

Before lunch, counsel assisting the inquiry were taking Geoffrey Watson through public information around significant workplace law breaches by the CFMEU on a national scale.

He said while he undertook some investigation into issues around fines for these being paid by the union instead of individuals, his remit was largely to focus on violence.

Asked by Mark Costello if such an arrangement, combined with the “general attitude”, could encourage further lawless behaviour. Watson said it did.

“If you’re going out there and you’re doing this and you know you will suffer no consequences, why not do it again?” Watson said.

He noted that while he heard of few instances of physical violence, it was mostly abusive conduct such as name-calling and sexual slurs.

“It was just assumed that this was the way you would go about your job,” he said, noting that Ravbar himself had told officials to “just leap over the barricade” at sites even if more formal right of entry processes were available.

The inquiry’s official livestream, which wasn’t working this morning, is streaming from the Brisbane Magistrates Court this afternoon.

Already there has been an occasional break when there is mention of a person subject to a non-publication order.

A CFMEU representative who was subsequently charged with murder drove union officials to interviews during an independent probe investigating allegations of violence and intimidation, a commission of inquiry has heard.

Geoffrey Watson, who published a 45-page report alleging a culture of violence that included threats and intimidation of women and children, suggested the inquiry investigate claims that those who took part in his investigation were transported by ousted union boss Jade Ingham or his “stepbrother or a half-brother”, Anthony Perrett.

Watson’s report into the CFMEU was handed down in July, three months before Perrett was charged with the torture and murder of Brisbane man Andrew Burow.

On the opening day of the highly anticipated inquiry, Watson revealed he had been told officials were driven to meetings with him by either Ingham or Perrett – a detail he suggested the inquiry ought to “look for”.

“They were driven there by that man [Perrett] and given a tape recorder by either Ingham or that man,” Watson said – noting he had invited all people he spoke with to record interviews themselves if they wished.

“Now is it true? I didn’t go in to look at it.”

Under questioning from counsel assisting the inquiry Mark Costello, Watson also said interviews with CFMEU figures were “hopeless without exception”, given their stated lack of memory of events or answers undermined by video footage he himself has seen of “instances of violence”.

Journalists are back in the courtroom now – without a livestream for the time being for anyone wanting to watch along outside.

Attention is turning to Watson’s report, and how he went about pulling it together.

He concedes he had the view on the flight for his first interviews that the situation was a “storm in a teacup”.

“Then I spent some weeks interviewing people, when I realised I was wrong and it was quite different,” Watson says, recalling one interview with a person who had complained about being a victim of abuse perpetrated by CFMEU officials that left him in tears.

Watson has also spoken about the lack of co-operation he received from former officials Ravbar and Ingham, but also major building companies, which are often the “first ones to complain, but the last ones to say anything in public” because he guessed they “don’t want to rock the boat”.

“I was stymied by an overwhelming omerta,” Watson said.