Having already heard from the CFMEU administration, union and industry figures, the commission of inquiry returned yesterday to kick off another three-day block, this time to ask questions of current and former Workplace Health and Safety Queensland staff.
In his opening remarks, senior counsel assisting, Patrick Wheelahan KC, said the questions related to a case study “that there was regulatory capture of the Workplace Health and Safety Queensland by the CFMEU during the period that Ms Grace Grace was the minister for industrial relations”.
“We use the term ‘regulatory capture’ in this case study to mean a form of institutional corruption,” he continued. This would add to three other instances of regulatory capture already detailed in part before the inquiry, or still being looked into, Wheelahan said.
Such matters included the development and implementation of the Best Practice Industry Conditions policies; a memorandum of understanding between police and the Office of Industrial Relations; and the Queensland Building and Construction Commission.
We heard of concerns raised with the corruption watchdog about the safety regulator and Grace, then began hearing evidence from the first of this week’s witnesses: Workplace Health and Safety Queensland operations manager Deborah Dargan.
Dargan told the inquiry yesterday that things began to shift in her office after the election of the Palaszczuk government in 2015, then again after Helen Burgess became construction compliance and field services director in 2018, with prosecution for right-of-entry breaches drying up and complaints from the CFMEU treated as higher priority.
Read the full article here
