Trade union commission report: people will be scared, witness says

A witness who gave evidence in secret to the trade union inquiry has objected to MPs seeing the final report.

Trade union commissioner Dyson Heydon made certain reports confidential.

A witness who gave evidence in secret to the trade union royal commission has objected to the Turnbull government’s offer to show confidential volumes of the inquiry’s final report to Labor or Senate crossbenchers, saying those who testified will be “scared”.

The witness, whose testimony against the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union is thought to be included in the sixth volume of the report, told The Australian he was concerned about the Coalition’s plans to defy the directive of commissioner Dyson Heydon that the volume be kept secret.

“Why would you show the senators any of this?” said the witness, speaking on condition of anonymity. “People in Melbourne will be scared.” He said he stood a chance of being “bashed” over the testimony he gave against the CFMEU in one of 14 private hearings in 2014.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has offered a representative from Labor and the Greens access to the report alongside the Senate crossbenchers, in an effort to persuade them to support a bill to restore regulator the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

A legal source close to the royal commission said there were competing imperatives between Mr Heydon’s order “that any information in the confidential report that might enable a person named in that report who has given evidence before the commission to be identified not be published”, and the government’s drive to implement reform.

“It is a question of managing on the one hand the commissioner’s directions and wishes and, on the other, the need for a practical solution to the policy issues,” the source said.

Mr Heydon, who is teaching in Oxford until next month, declined to comment. He made the confidentiality order when publishing the interim report in December 2014, adding that the report “reveals grave threats to the power and authority of the Australian state”.

“That recommendation and that order were made because the confidential volume deals with 29 threats to witnesses,” Mr Heydon said in 2014.

“It is necessary for that volume to be confidential in order to protect the physical wellbeing of those witnesses and their families.”

Senator Cash told Sky News yesterday that the order had been amended. When publishing his final report, in December, Mr Heydon gave no explanation about why the sixth volume was to be kept secret.