Donation: a ‘kickback’ by another name, union inquiry hears

Fresh allegations of money changing hands between the construction union and building firm Thiess have surfaced.

Fresh allegations of money changing hands between the construction union and building firm Thiess have surfaced at the trade union royal commission.

Thiess allegedly offered a one-off “donation” of $100,000 to the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union via the union-linked Building Trades Group in 2005, former construction union official Michael Knott told the commission yesterday.

The firm was also making monthly payments to a drug and alcohol program run by the BTG, formed by a group of unions, including the CFMEU, in 2005 and 2006.

Mr Knott, who managed the BTG program in his role as a CFMEU official, told the commission he considered the donation offer a “kickback”.

“An organiser employed by the CFMEU, Mr Steve Dickson came to my office and said words … to the following effect: ‘Thiess have approached me with an offer of a $100,000 donation to the union’.

“ I then said words to the following effect: ‘That’s a f..king kickback! Under no circumstances have anything to do with it. It’s corruption,” Mr Knott’s witness statement tendered to the commission stated.

In cross-examination, opposing counsel asked Mr Knott: “You are making that up, aren’t you?”

Mr Knott replied: ‘No.’

Mr Dickson also said “words to the effect: ‘The AWU do it all the time, it’s a donation’,” Mr Knott claimed, adding that he raised the conversation with Andrew Ferguson, then NSW CFMEU secretary but heard “nothing further”.

On resigning from the union in 2011, Mr Knott said he audited the BTG records and later recorded in an email that: “On 13 April, 2006, an amount of $100,000 was deposited into the Commonwealth Bank BTG Drug and Alcohol Safety Program … by Thiess.”

“This account is normally used to receive monthly industry levy payments. These deposit amounts generally do not exceed $10,000 from any single company,” says the email tendered into evidence at the commission.

“At that time, in 2006, Thiess were making monthly BTG Drug and Alcohol Safety Program levy payments of $1313 per month.”

The latest allegations follow evidence by counsel assisting the commission, Sarah McNaughton SC, that have sought to prove a pattern of social programs allegedly being used to “process” money intended for the unions.

The commission also heard yesterday from Brian Seidler, executive director of the Master Builders Association in NSW, who previously co-managed another drug and alcohol treatment foundation linked to the CFMEU.

He resigned from the foundation because of concerns about its financial management and “ what appeared to be interference in its management” by the NSW branch of the CFMEU.

The commission also heard the CFMEU donated $7 million to the “committee to defend trade union rights” in 2006 “to protect the CFMEU’s assets”.