CFMEU threatens construction of Sydney Jewish hub at Hakoah Club

The threat to protest at the Hakoah Club construction site has pitted the CFMEU against one of Australia’s oldest Jewish community organisations, and raises questions about ties between the notorious union and a construction giant.

An artist’s impression of the Hakoah Club at White City development.

The CFMEU has threatened to disrupt Sydney’s long-delayed new Jewish community hub at White City, a campaign that has raised questions about the relationship between the notorious union and one of the country’s biggest construction companies.

The threat to protest at the Hakoah Club construction site has pitted the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union, currently fighting multiple allegations of corruption, and building giant Parkview Constructions, on one side, against the Hakoah Club, one of Australia’s oldest Jewish community organisations, on the other.

The odd alliance has raised eyebrows after the CFMEU claimed it was taking action against the club not just for its members but “on behalf of Parkview and the subcontractors”.

The union had threatened to bring pro-Palestine demonstrators to the planned protest, according to one source.

The CFMEU’s support of the building giant comes at a time when the union is under great scrutiny for alleged corrupt dealings in the construction industry.

The Hakoah Club recently terminated its contract with Parkview over performance issues and is now in a commercial dispute with the company, founded by executive chairman Tony Touma in 1997. The company claims to have built more than 15,000 apartments in Sydney.

The company and the union have been linked in a corruption case in which CFMEU NSW boss Darren Greenfield is alleged to have bragged about his influence over Parkview.

Last month NSW Premier Chris Minns suspended the CFMEU’s affiliation with the Labor Party after hidden camera footage emerged allegedly capturing Mr Greenfield receiving a $5000 cash bribe as part of a kickback deal.

Mr Greenfield was charged in September 2021 with corruption offences which are still before the courts.

In a May 2019 meeting – recorded by police with a camera hidden in the ceiling of the union office – Mr Greenfield allegedly bragged to a building company director of how the union would ensure Parkview Constructions favoured his company to receive a contract.

“If I say to you that I’ll talk to Parkview for this one, I will make sure you get the job.”

In other comments, Mr Greenfield allegedly said: “Tony is a bullshitter. If you don’t stand on him and make sure, you know what I mean …. you keep telling him.

“If he wants a relationship with us he can just stick to what we f..king agree to.”

In another meeting, in January 2019, Greenfield promised to pressure Parkview Constructions on a contract, telling the builder that if a contractor didn’t have an enterprise bargaining agreement with the union, “we’ll be on that job next week, kicking the f..k out of them”.

The prosecutor read out multiple expletive-ridden comments allegedly made by Darren Greenfield that she said showed he engaged in a “threatening and coercive” manner towards people in the industry.

Mr Greenfield’s son, Michael Greenfield, the NSW CFMEU’s assistant secretary and a former NRL player, has also been charged. Last week he resigned from the position, claiming weeks of “sensationalist media reporting and relentless government scrutiny” had placed “unbearable pressure on his family”.

Darren Greenfield has resisted calls from the ACTU to step aside from his $276,000 a year leadership role and denies wrongdoing. The Australian does not suggest he is guilty, only that he has been charged.

Two weeks ago, Mr Greenfield sent an email to Sydney Grammar School’s Edgecliff preparatory school, which adjoins the Hakoah site, advising that the union was looking to “organise an ongoing protest outside the site sometime this week on behalf of Parkview and the subcontractors and our members”.

The email was to let the school know “we have no intention of disrupting your school and hope to always minimise this”.

“The CFMEU has been in discussions with the developer and the builder involved on the site next door to the school, for many weeks now,” Mr Greenfield wrote. “We were hoping there was a resolution to the issues between the parties but even though the parties were very close to reaching agreement they have not.”

That protest has not yet eventuated.

The old Hakoah Club building in Bondi, the hub of Sydney’s Jewish community for decades – and the target of a bombing in 1982 – was sold in 2009, with the historic White City tennis courts in Paddington selected as the site for a new, $95m development that would house community, sporting and entertainment facilities.

Some $60m has been contributed by the Jewish community and $20m by state and federal governments.

The club says it will be open to all, with an estimated 25 per cent of members of the old club non-Jewish.

The development, located next to Sydney Grammar’s preparatory school, was supposed to have been completed by mid-2024, but has been hit by delays and controversy.

The club signed a contract with Parkview Constructions in 2022, but terminated it earlier this year alleging non performance, and is now in dispute with the building company over a settlement.

It is understood Hakoah has offered to pay subcontractors any money owing to them and novate their contracts to a new builder, but the dispute with Parkview remains unresolved.

In the meantime, the site has sat empty with no work taking place for months.

Hakoah club said it felt it was in the best interests of the club to find a new builder after being left disappointed by the progress of Parkview Constructions.

“We’ve got a very good team of consultants working with us and we will very shortly be in a position to go out to a whole range of new builders and get going again as soon as possible.”

The club pointed to Israel’s war against Hamas and the rising tide of anti-Semitism making the building of the new community hub more pertinent than ever.

“It’s probably a more powerful rationale for why we’re building Hakoah in the first place,” the club said.

However, in recent months, the CFMEU has become involved in the dispute, stopping payments to subcontractors and also stopping the club fixing environmental problems at the site caused by heavy rains.

The CFMEU had threatened to picket and protest at the site, as it sought to “heavy” the club to pay Parkview substantially more money for the terminated contract, according to one source in the Jewish community.

“That’s the kind of language they use but the reality is the CFMEU has no business in the matter,” the source said. “This is not an industrial dispute with members of the union. If anything, they should be going after Parkview for not paying their subbies. So one would have to ask – why are they doing that?”

“All so their mate builders can get a greater payment out of the Jewish community,” another source told The Australian.