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The Queensland branch of the CFMEU improperly used donations to pay personal fines, including one of more than $30,000, the inquiry into misconduct at the scandal-plagued union, and the construction industry, has heard.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Andrew Meagher KC, told a Brisbane hearing on Tuesday that the union had a pattern over several years of using donations to pay personal payment orders imposed against members and officials who breached the Fair Work Act.
Meagher listed numerous occasions – totalling more than $156,000 – where donations to relieve financial distress were used to cover penalties incurred by CFMEU figures, including ousted boss Michael Ravbar.
“This practice successfully circumvented the rule of law, and the investigations are ongoing as to the full extent to which the CFMEUQ paid pecuniary penalties that were the subject of personal payment orders,” Meagher said.
Meagher outlined rules governing the federal and state branches of the CFMEU. He said upcoming hearings would probe how the union historically moved financial resources to sidestep the effect of the law.
“It was not necessarily unlawful, but it is certainly illegitimate in the sense that it’s morally repugnant,” Meagher said.
In one example, he pointed to a $30,000 fine handed to former CFMEU official Beau Seiffert in 2022, which he said was paid by the union using donations to relieve financial hardship.
“Mr Seiffert, in this case, didn’t feel any sting or pain from the order, which was the purpose of the orders to prevent him engaging in such conduct,” Meagher said.
He said a court had ordered the union to only pay a maximum 50 per cent of the fine, but instead Seiffert suffered no financial penalty.
The fine was handed to him for using “coercive threats” – such as withholding work – towards a contractor to have a specific health and safety representative appointed to the site, Meagher said.
Meagher spent nearly two hours detailing laws governing the union’s federal and state branches, saying the inquiry was interested in “various anomalies” across financial documents between 2013 and 2014.
One internal document from 2015 showed the CFMEU’s Queensland branch had shared accounting documents before 2013 with a separate branch of the federal CFMEU.
The federal body reported none of its own income or expenditures before 2013, after which time, Meagher said, this arrangement flipped.
“I think it’s fair to observe at this point that the CFMEU – the federal body and the state CFMEUQ – clearly regarded the funds held by the state body as being available [for] expenses to service all members of both the federal and the state body,” Meagher said.
“There’s a history of them treating the two entities in this way.”
Financial documents from 2025 also referred to a long-standing “defence fund” designed to combat “Draconian industrial laws” from a “hostile federal government” – said to be the Howard coalition.
The state and federal CFMEU branches at separate times laid claim to the $7.95 million cash pool.
Queensland launched the $19.7 million commission of inquiry last year after reporting by this masthead and 60 Minutes into criminality, corruption and misconduct in the union and construction sector nationwide.
The probe was given a nearly 18-month extension to deliver its final report, due in December 2027.
It continues from Wednesday, hearing from international criminology experts and accounting specialist Natalie Faulkner.
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