Ex-CFMEU boss Dave Hanna ‘filmed himself raping woman’

Veteran Labor powerbroker Dave Hanna ­allegedly filmed unconscious woman while he raped her, court hears.

Former state Labor vice-president Dave Hanna leaves the District Court in Brisbane. Picture: AAP

Veteran union boss and Labor powerbroker Dave Hanna ­allegedly filmed an unconscious woman while he raped her, hours after they met in an inner-city Brisbane nightclub.

The one-time Labor Party Queensland vice-president and leader of the “Old Guard” faction — whose members included Kevin Rudd and Peter Beattie — pleaded not guilty yesterday to three counts of rape and a charge of filming the woman’s genitalia in breach of her privacy.

During the opening of what is expected to be a five-day District Court trial, prosecutors said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sent text and Facebook messages to friends asking for help moments before she was allegedly raped in 2017.

Mr Hanna, 54, a father of three, was among the most powerful Labor figures in Queensland as state secretary of the then Builders Labourers Federation for 15 years, before becoming nat­ional president of the construction division of the CFMEU.

Crown prosecutor Michael Lehane told the jury that witness testimony would show Mr Hanna met the woman at a club in Fortitude Valley and took advantage of her vulnerability because she was drunk.

“There will be no dispute that the accused had ­sexual intercourse with (the woman),” Mr ­Lehane said.

The pair left in a taxi together about 2am on March 4, travelling to her apartment in the northern Brisbane suburb of Taigum.

Hanna with Annastacia Palaszczuk at a union rally in 2015. Picture: Glenn Barnes

Mr Lehane said the taxi driver observed Mr Hanna “all over” the “unresponsive” woman, who had “scant” memory of the trip home but remembered telling Mr Hanna she didn’t want to have sex with him.

When they arrived at the unit complex at 2.18am, Mr Hanna kicked the door of the woman’s apartment open because she did not have her keys.

Mr Lehane said once they were inside, the woman sent a Facebook message to a friend saying: “Save me.” She also tried to call an ex-boyfriend and sent him a text message that said: “Please help me.”

“She remembers saying several times ‘I don’t want to’,” Mr Lehane said. “She remembers him forcing his penis inside her vagina and it felt uncomfortable.”

The woman woke, alone and naked with bruising on her inner thighs. She contacted friends and the police, and was medically ­examined by a doctor.

Mr Lehane said the woman was unable to identify the man who had accompanied her home, but police investigations led to Mr Hanna’s arrest two days later. A search of Mr Hanna’s phone recovered deleted photos and ­videos of the naked woman, Mr Lehane said. Two videos allegedly showed Mr Hanna digitally ­penetrating the woman.

“In essence, the crown case is that the accused, knowing (the victim’s) cognitive capacity to give consent to sexual activity and her physical capacity to resist unwanted sexual activity was ­effectively taken away by her gross intoxication, took advantage of his position and her vulnerability by performing non-consensual acts upon her or sexual acts where she lacked the cognitive capacity to consent,” Mr Lehane said.

He said witnesses and CCTV footage would show the woman appeared heavily intoxicated when she met Mr Hanna at the rooftop nightclub shortly after midnight. “By that time, she’d drunk a lot of alcohol,” Mr Lehane said. “She was asked to leave the venue due to her intoxicated state.”

Mr Lehane said a security guard would testify that the woman appeared “a little bit off balance, stumbling in her speech and made a lot of contradictory comments”, while Mr Hanna did not appear intoxicated.