Updated July 15, 2026 — 6:12pm,first published 1:38pm

Construction industry figures believed the Queensland government regulator, Workplace Health and Safety, had been captured by the CFMEU and was doing its bidding, the state’s commission of inquiry into the union has heard on a packed-out day.

David Balmer, regional director of Spanish multinational Acciona and chair of the Queensland Major Contractors’ Association, made the comments on Wednesday afternoon at the Commonwealth Law Courts in Brisbane’s CBD.

“The speculation very much was that the CFMEU had control of [Workplace Health and Safety Queensland] and were directing their efforts, their resources and their traffic,” he said.

“We saw them as a captured regulator.

“If the CFMEU had an objective and agenda that required the assistance of the WHSQ to enable, then that would be made to happen … it was quite unhealthy.”

The allegation WHSQ had been influenced by the union has come up multiple times during the inquiry. In April it heard the union had turned the regulator’s boss into a “call centre operator”.

Earlier on Wednesday, a senior Department of Transport official said she had been “terrified” during a fraught meeting with CFMEU leaders to discuss the impact of employment policies on projects.

Chief procurement officer Deanne Hawkswood described the meeting, during which former CFMEU leaders Jade Ingham and Michael Ravbar sat down the end of a large table in a boardroom, as a “very tense environment”.

The union leaders swore at government officials, the inquiry was told, and were aggressive, arrogant and dismissive of department concerns.

Transport and Main Roads chief procurement officer Deanne Hawkswood oversaw the sector’s response to the state government’s workplace entitlement conditions created by the union, dubbed Best Practice Industry Conditions (BPIC).

Hawkswood said it quickly became clear the framework represented an “impossible policy” for transport infrastructure, as it was designed to the requirements of the building sector, rather than the civil sector.

These concerns were raised with key state government portfolios, including the Department of Housing and Public Works and the transport minister, as well as the CFMEU.

Hawkswood said she and other senior TMR officials met with Ingham and Ravbar at the union’s headquarters in May 2020 to discuss concerns about BPIC.

“We were there to talk about how we were going to be able to approach the implementation [of BPIC] and what some of the barriers would be,” Hawkswood said.

“[Ravbar and Ingham] were quite aggressive, and said things along the lines of, ‘Don’t come here and start telling us what you’re not going to do.’”

Hawkswood said she was in disbelief after hearing the language used towards TMR director-general Neil Scales and deputy director-general Amanda Yates, who were also in attendance.

“As I was watching how they were behaving towards two of our most senior people in the department, I was scared,” she said.

“I wanted to say something, but I was too chickenshit to say anything. I didn’t want to be targeted by them.”

Hawkswood said TMR aired concerns about how BPIC would impact transport projects as early as 2019, and communicated potential issues with former transport minister Mark Bailey and former public works minister Mick de Brenni.

“We really wanted to make sure they did understand … the nuances for the transport infrastructure program and what this [BPIC] decision would mean to the department,” Hawkswood said.

“Our preference would have been that this, the BPIC, just stayed within the building sector. They were more mature in terms of dealing with industrial relations [than] the civil space.”

Hawkswood said former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s office expected minimum conditions to be practised on transport projects as soon as possible, and instructed TMR on the consultation process, including to meet with the CFMEU.

Further evidence discussed the cost impact of BPIC on key projects, with Hawkswood telling the inquiry early modelling showed an increase of about 3.6 per cent.

By 2024, “real-life examples” showed costs had blown out by up to 25 per cent.

Presiding commissioner Stuart Wood KC pressed Hawkswood on why it took TMR four-and-a-half years to show the true cost of BPIC, previously described by de Brenni as a “cost-neutral policy”.

“Surely industry could have told you when you presented BPIC to them in December 2020 [that] this is going to blow up costs 20 [to] 25 per cent. It just seems a long time to wait,” Wood said.

Hawkswood admitted that TMR’s modelling “undercooked” the true cost of BPIC.

“We thought it would just impact the labour component of the project and what the longer-term modelling showed is that it actually impacted so much more of those construction costs.”

Speaking in the afternoon, Balmer said the construction industry had not seen a need for the BPIC reforms and there was minimal consultation when they were introduced.

Acciona had calculated they would add between $25 and $54 million to the Coomera Connector stage one road project.

Total costs blew out by $80 million. However, this was at least partially due to the scope increasing.

Balmer said the only official explanation he’d ever been given for why the reforms were necessary was at an industry engagement forum, where deputy director general at the department of public works, Sharon Bailey, reportedly told the crowd it would prevent “wage theft”.

“Everybody had a very emotive response to that … I don’t consider that a reasonable response at all, not even close,” he said.

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