Former workplace safety boss wanted to sack ‘friend of the CFMEU’, but couldn’t

A former head of Queensland’s workplace safety regulator said he wanted, but was unable, to sack an employee under corruption watchdog monitoring who was described as a friend of the CFMEU.

Peter McKay, the former deputy director-general in charge of the regulator, also told the state’s CFMEU inquiry that the now ousted leader Michael Ravbar directed organisers to call him directly with all issues as reprisal for not returning the sidelined employee to a more powerful role.

The powerful state probe has this week returned to the topic of the CFMEU’s “regulatory capture” of the office, with evidence from another inspector and its executive director for compliance and field services, Sarina Wise.

Taking the witness stand himself on Thursday, McKay reiterated widespread and now widely aired concerns about the role and actions of former construction compliance and field services director Helen Burgess.

Last year, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie told parliament Burgess had been suspended and her home raided by the Crime and Corruption Commission. The inquiry has heard Burgess had a personal relationship with former CFMEU state president Royce Kupsch.

The inquiry has also heard about the existence of complaints that Burgess had bullied and abused safety inspectors under her control, including directing some to issue stop-work notices they believed to be unlawful.

Wise told the inquiry on Wednesday the office had been referred information by the CCC that Burgess was in a de facto relationship with a CFMEU delegate whose son she had hired five years earlier as an inspector, without disclosing the conflict.

In his evidence, McKay said he was reluctant to take a secondment to lead the regulator given issues with the CFMEU, its relationship with Burgess, and the resulting cultural problems for the broader staff.

By this time, Burgess had been moved by McKay’s predecessor, Kym Bancroft, into a role where she no longer had control of the office’s construction inspectors.

In McKay’s 137-page witness statement bundle tendered with the inquiry, he said the then state CFMEU secretary, Ravbar, “saw the answer to every problem being the return of Ms Burgess” to her more powerful role.

“In almost every conversation that I had with him, he would raise the issue of putting Ms Burgess back in charge of the inspectors,” McKay said, including words to the effect of “if you would agree to put Helen back, this wouldn’t be a problem”.

Ravbar also pushed then Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace to do the same in a meeting with McKay. In a September 2023 conversation with another former CFMEU official, Kurt Pauls, McKay recalled him referring to Burgess as a “friend of the CFMEU”.

“I did not trust her and she was not well-liked in OIR but that, in and of itself, is not grounds to terminate the employment of a permanent public service staff person,” McKay said, also citing earlier disciplinary action around the use of a personal phone to deal with a CFMEU complaint.

“If it was the case that I could simply remove her from OIR, I would have, but at that time there was not enough to go on to terminate her.”

Instead, McKay said Burgess was closely managed in the “low risk” and less powerful role. Despite Wise also not trusting her and seeking to have her moved, McKay said no other executives trusted her either, with their units either less suitable or higher risk for Burgess.

When a proposal was put forward by the office for a new hotline for construction sector concerns specifically, Pauls told McKay in a meeting that if Burgess was not reinstated, the union would not use the 1300 number and would call another senior staffer directly.

This, ultimately, ended up being McKay, who said he then had to relay detail from all such calls to the relevant team despite this both delaying action for the union and being a waste of his time while leading the 900-strong office.

Despite this, McKay continued, saying he thought it was better him than another member of his staff and that to not do so would have been a “nuclear option” in which the union could claim it was being ignored by the regulator.

In cross-examination by counsel for Ravbar, Ruth O’Gorman KC, McKay was asked if describing such calls as “reprisal” was too strong. He said it was not.

“Michael Ravbar had said to me, I will give your mobile phone number to all of my organisers, and they will ring you with everything. So you know, this was a campaign to say to me, you haven’t done what I told you to do, and the result of that is you are going to cop all these calls from my organisers”.

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