The treatment of Marda Dandhi was exposed in July 2024 by the Building Bad investigation by The Age, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes. The investigation uncovered a video of a CFMEU organiser allegedly threatening to bash the two owners of Marda Dandhi, which was aligned with the rival Australian Workers’ Union.
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A union official was also recorded boasting the CFMEU controlled who could work on state government sites. Labor’s Big Build in Victoria comprises various massive projects in Melbourne funded by both the state and federal governments, including the Suburban Rail Loop, the West Gate Tunnel, Melbourne Airport Rail, the Metro Tunnel and the Level Crossing Removal Project, and other regional works.
The leaked emails show the government was discussing the coercion case over a six-month period from April 2022 to up to four weeks before the November election. After the election, the communications ceased.
Labor MP Vicki Ward, who was parliamentary secretary of transport infrastructure at the time and is now minister for equality, held a one-hour meeting with a Marda Dandhi owner – who was a constituent in her seat of Eltham in Melbourne’s northern suburbs – about the allegations early in 2022.
She advised him to go to police after he told her that “unsavoury characters” were surveilling his family home at a time when he was threatening to speak up on CFMEU coercion.
She also said she had briefed Allan’s deputy chief of staff in April and advised that then-small business minister Jaala Pulford was handling the “serious” allegations, according to the emails. Allan was Victoria’s infrastructure minister at the time and responsible for the Big Build. She became premier in September 2023 after Daniel Andrews retired following Labor’s election win.
The emails contrast with Allan’s repeated insistence that claims of CFMEU coercion and the kicking off of subcontractors from state government sites were the responsibility of the state’s principal contractors or the Commonwealth.
This masthead has previously reported that Marda Dandhi wrote to Allan in April 2022 detailing violence and abuse the owners had been subjected to. But the emails are the first insight into what was going on behind the scenes. When Allan finally responded to Marda Dandhi in April 2023, she referred the firm to the federal government or state infrastructure authorities. The firm collapsed a few months later.
The government did not respond to requests for comment about the email exchange with Marda Dandhi.
Pulford, who did not contest the 2022 election and has retired from politics, could not be reached for comment.
In an email sent to Marda Dandhi on April 19, 2022, Ward said she had met with Allan’s deputy chief of staff that morning “as we work through this situation and see what can be done to help”.
Ward was responding to the owner’s emails detailing CFMEU intimidation and that his neighbour had informed him that “two unsavoury characters had been parked on the corner of his property and had been watching my property”.
“When he made himself aware to them the cars have driven off,” the owner wrote to Ward. “For him to think that sighting warrants informing me is a little unsettling.”
When the owner emailed again in October suggesting he had lost patience and mentioning the coming election, Ward sought to assure him the government was still on the case.
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In her last communication to the owner, on October 31, 2022, Ward said she had been having “many conversations in the background”.
“I met with Minister Pulford a few months ago (and have been in communication with her since), and she has let me know she’s taking the matters seriously and steps are being taken to work through the challenges you’re facing,” she said.
“I know it isn’t the full resolution you are expecting and I hear how stressful and challenging this is for your business. However, we are trying to find a resolution.”
The Indigenous firm owner told this masthead that when he went to the Australian Building and Construction Commission in 2022, the building watchdog told him it could not help him as the Albanese government had cut its funding.
He later went to the Fair Work Ombudsman in May 2023. Two and half years later, the Ombudsman launched its legal action against the CFMEU, alleging organisers Joel Shackleton and Gerry McCrudden threatened and abused the Marda Dandhi owners. The state government and the builders are not respondents to the action.
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