Inquiry demand after AFP drops CFMEU probe

The CFMEU has called for an inquiry into the Australian Federal Police’s handling of a seven-year investigation into the union’s Queensland branch.

CFMEU construction division national secretary Dave Noonan. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

The CFMEU has called for an inquiry into the Australian Federal Police’s handling of a seven-year investigation into the union’s Queensland branch, accusing the police of wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds through a “world-record fishing expedition”.

The AFP wrote to the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union last week, revealing it would be closing an investigation launched in 2015 following the referral of claims by the Heydon trade union royal commission that CFMEU officials had ordered the destruction of documents.

Known as Operation Naunton, dozens of AFP officers raided the CFMEU’s Brisbane office in 2015 seizing a large volume of digital material.

In June 2017, the AFP charged the union’s former construction division state president Dave Hanna with destroying documents. He was convicted in 2018 and sentenced to nine months’ ­imprisonment fully suspended.

However, the AFP continued its investigation for years, and ­admitted on Wednesday in a statement to The Australian “errors” had been made by forensics investigators during the initial processing of the digital material.

Correspondence between lawyers for the AFP and the union, seen by The Australian, details how the AFP identified in 2020 that a seized mail server had not extracted information correctly and its contents were unindexed.

In its letter to the union last week, the AFP said it “acknowledges the investigation has involved a protracted dispute regard­ing access to seized material and claims of legal professional privilege”.

In a statement on Wednesday, an AFP spokesman said: “After a review of the case, the AFP’s Sensitive Investigation Oversight Board has decided to conclude the investigation. This decision took into account a range of issues, including the sufficiency of evidence gathered and the likelihood of successful prosecution.

“Further consideration was given to the significant level of resources required to continue investigating the matter, weighed against the AFP’s current operational and investigative priorities.”

The spokesman said since 2015, the AFP had “strengthened and improved its procedures and protocols for managing claims of legal professional privilege when executing search warrants”.

“Investigators and digital forensic experts now work with the AFP’s Legal Professional Privilege Practice Group to plan for expected claims over hard copy material, data and digital devices,” he said.

“The AFP has previously advised the CFMEU of errors made by digital forensics investigators.”

But CFMEU construction division national secretary Dave Noonan accused the AFP of “setting a world record for a fishing expedition”. “It’s a seven-year fishing expedition and they have not caught a sardine,” he said.

“It’s just another chapter in the harassment of the union, its employees and its officials by the AFP acting under the instructions of the Heydon royal commission.

“We’ll probably never see an inquiry into Heydon’s activities as a judge and royal commissioner, but there ought to be at least an inquiry into the activities of the AFP and the joint taskforce who have brought numerous high-profile and unsuccessful prosecutions against the union and its officers.”

Mr Noonan said the union had been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in complying with orders of the court.

“The AFP originally launched a very high-profile raid on our Brisbane office and we went to court and the court made orders restraining them from obtaining documents that had legal professional privilege,” he said.

“Significant amounts of taxpayers’ money have been spent on this ideological romp. Australians might be entitled to ask why aren’t those resources being used in the fight against organised crime, ­terrorism and drug smuggling.”