CFMEU scores legal win against AFP as injunction granted

The construction union has won a permanent injunction following a federal police raid on its ACT headquarters.

CFMEU construction division secretary Dave Noonan.

The construction union has won a permanent injunction following a federal police raid on its ACT headquarters, with the taskforce attached to the trade union royal commission ordered to return mate­rial seized within seven days.

The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union claimed yesterday that the Australian Federal Police was being “politicis­ed”, after the ACT Sup­reme Court threw out a warrant used in the raid on the union’s Canberra branch.

The court also ordered the AFP to pay the CFMEU’s costs.

The AFP seized computer files and hardware during the raid, which followed the arrests of three people as a result of the royal commission’s Canberra hearings.

Charges against former Canberra raiders NRL star John Lomax, a CFMEU organiser, were later dropped.

Another former CFMEU official, Halafihi Kivalu, faces blackmail charges and Canberra formworker Tuungafasi Manase is alleged to have committed perjury.

The CFMEU is scheduled to appear in the Federal Court in Brisbane on Monday to challenge another AFP raid, after winning a temporary injunction against a warrant used to search its Queensland headquarters.

CFMEU construction division secretary Dave Noonan said: “We are concerned that the ... government and the trade union royal commission have politicised the Australian Federal Police in an unprecedented way.’’

Mr Noonan also accused the AFP in Canberra of possible breaches of the Fair Work Act, after an officer allegedly “suggest­ed” to a meeting of subcontractors that the industry cut the union out of enterprise bargaining, in favour of negotiating through Master Builders Australia.

The AFP confirmed that the office­r in question had attended a meeting ­arranged by Master Builders Australia as part of its usual “crime prevention advice”.

But it said that “at no time” did the officer “comment for or against CFMEU EBAs”.