Jackie Trad had ‘union whisperer’ Evan Moorhead at rail talks

Lobbyist Evan Moorhead was invited by former deputy premier Jackie Trad to be at secret, high-level government meetings about the Cross River Rail project.

Jackie Trad and Evan Moorhead. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Lobbyist and Labor campaigner Evan Moorhead was invited by former deputy premier Jackie Trad to be at secret, high-level government meetings about the state’s largest infrastructure project, the $5.4bn Cross River Rail, and was hired as a union whisperer on the mega-deal.

An investigation by The Australian has discovered that Ms Trad and Cross River Rail Delivery Authority chief Graeme Newton invited Mr Moorhead to six meetings in three days in June last year, weeks after he quit as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government strategy chief to set up shop as a lobbyist.

The contents of the meetings are so secret they have been blocked from release by the Palas­zczuk government, saying the details are “cabinet in confidence”.

The CRRDA has confirmed Mr Moorhead was hired by the government authority not as a lobbyist but to “liaise” with ­unions in the critical period before the government inked a deal on July 1 with the Pulse Consortium to build the public rail behemoth.

The Australian understands the unions were putting pressure on Ms Trad — then treasurer and minister responsible for the project — to ensure lead contractor CPB matched the 5 per cent per annum wage increase guaranteed to workers on the privately funded Queens Wharf casino project in the Brisbane CBD.

The CRRDA was trying to get the unions into the bargaining process and Mr Moorhead’s job was to “try to get them to be reasonable”.

Mr Moorhead, in an interview with The Australian on Monday, denied he was providing advice to the CRRDA about their dealings with the CFMEU, saying his contract with the agency “specifically excluded industrial relations”.

Mr Moorhead — a former state Labor MP, ALP state secretary and now lobbyist — said he was “providing advice to Cross River Rail”.

“I was helping them with stakeholder relations and dealing with government, and it was in accordance with the advice of the Integrity Commissioner and Cross River Rail probity advisers … my contract with the Cross River Rail specifically excluded industrial relations.”

Late on Tuesday, Mr Moorhead clarified, and said his role with the CRRDA included assisting the authority with “government and union stakeholders, on the application of the best practice principles”.

“CRRDA had other staff and consultants that undertook industrial relations negotiations with unions,” he said.

Documents show Mr Moorhead attended six meetings between June 24 and June 26 last year, with at least one held in the deputy premier’s boardroom at the government’s 1 William Street skyscraper. At all meetings, Mr Moorhead was the only private ­attendee. The rest were senior government, CRRDA or Cross River Rail board officials.

A spokesman for the CRRDA said Mr Moorhead was engaged as a “specialist contractor to provide stakeholder management ­liaison services during the crucial and complex contract finalisation stage of the CRR project”.

“This included liaising with both the preferred contractors and employee representatives to ensure that key elements of the government’s best practice principles, a new (procurement) policy, were appropriately applied during this key part of the procurement,” he said.

The spokesman said Mr Moorhead held “specialist skills and expertise” with experience at the highest levels of government and in the business sector, and was not engaged as a lobbyist.

Disclosures show Anacta Strategies was awarded a “stakeholder advisory services” contract by the CRRDA on June 27 last year for $92,400.

Weeks after the secret meetings, on August 30 last year, Mr Moorhead’s Anacta Strategies began acting for train manufacturer Downer, a company he had dealings with when he worked in Ms Palaszczuk’s office as her senior government strategist.

Downer is likely to build the trains for the Cross River Rail, in line with the government’s election promise to construct them in Queensland if at all possible.

A contract announcement is expected during the election campaign at Downer’s Maryborough workshop, in a Labor-held marginal seat.

Mr Moorhead said his later work for Downer was not a conflict of interest because he said he and the CRRDA were not involved in “any rollingstock decisions whatsoever”.

Ms Palaszczuk has yet to respond to requests to comment about her former senior staffer Mr Moorhead’s dual roles as one of Queensland’s most successful lobbyists and a paid campaigner for the Labor party, trying to get her re-elected at the October 31 poll.

Only the Australian Workers Union ended up negotiating an industrial agreement with contractor CPB, understood to include wages rises of 3.5 per cent per year. The CFMEU has since waged a lengthy campaign against Ms Trad, her successor, State Development Minister Kate Jones, the government, the CRRDA and the project. It last month defected from Labor’s Left faction, citing the “Cross River Fail” as partial motivation.