Underworld figure Mick Gatto has been hit with a personal safety intervention order by Victoria Police after allegedly running a campaign of harassment against investigative journalist Nick McKenzie.
The order, which was served on Tuesday, comes as the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects is set to begin on Wednesday. Gatto is expected to be a significant focus of its inquiries.
Victoria Police, which declined to comment, took the unusual step of seeking the order independently based on its own intelligence and threat assessment against the multi-Walkley Award-winning reporter for this masthead and Nine’s 60 Minutes.
The terms and basis of the order are unclear because it was issued by police directly, but Gatto has publicly promoted a range of merchandise and stickers attacking McKenzie and Nine, owner of this masthead.
The stickers have been sighted on the Mornington Peninsula and in Melbourne’s CBD.
Gatto, 71, has featured prominently in reporting by McKenzie and this masthead in the Building Bad series, which has uncovered alleged multibillion-dollar rorting of Victorian government Big Build projects, malfeasance by the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) and infiltration of the union movement and government building projects by organised crime figures.
Gatto was described in the Rotting from the Top report by Geoffrey Watson, SC, as having been “a malignant influence on the CFMEU for decades”.
In June, Gatto was arrested but not charged by detectives from Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk, which was formed in mid-2024 to target criminal behaviour linked to the construction industry.
The underworld figure, who declined to comment, has dubbed it the “two sets of laws” campaign and been vocal in his criticism of McKenzie on podcasts, including one recently hosted by former Nine presenter Karl Stefanovic.
McKenzie’s reporting on union and labour-hire corruption has previously seen him targeted by construction industry figures with a spate of harassing and threatening phone calls that led to criminal charges, as well as a break-in at his home that remains unsolved. It is not suggested Gatto was involved in those incidents.
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