Updated ,first published
The former head of Queensland’s workplace safety regulator said he wanted to, but could not, fire a worker under investigation for corruption who was described as a friend of the CFMEU.
Peter McKay, the former deputy director general in charge of the regulator, also told the CFMEU inquiry that sacked leader Michael Ravbar saw the worker’s return to his senior role as the answer to every problem.
A powerful government investigation this week has returned to the topic of CFMEU’s “regulatory capture” of officeas well as testimony given by another auditor and its executive director of compliance and field services, Sarina Wise.
Taking the witness stand on Thursday, McKay echoed widespread and now widely publicized concerns about the role and actions of former construction compliance and field services director Helen Burgess.
Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Jarrod Bleijie told parliament Burgess had been suspended and his home raided by the Crime and Corruption Commission. The inquest heard Burgess had a close personal relationship with former CFMEU state president Royce Kupsch.
The inquiry also heard about the existence of complaints that Burgess had bullied and harassed security inspectors under his controlincluding directing some of the issuing stop-work notices they believed to be illegal.
Wise told the inquiry on Wednesday that the office was tipped off by the CCC in July 2025 that Burgess was in a de facto relationship with a CFMEU member who had hired his son as an inspector without disclosing the conflict.
In his evidence, McKay said he had been reluctant to take over the role of regulator due to issues with the CFMEU, his relationship with Burgess, and cultural problems caused by many workers.
That was the concern that McKay planned to meet with the office’s health and safety representatives between when he was announced to be in the role and when he officially started in mid-2023.
By this time, Burgess had been moved by McKay’s predecessor Kym Bancroft into a role in which he no longer had control over the building inspectors office. At another meeting shortly after the start, McKay assured the representatives that Burgess would not return.
“I don’t think I told them, but it was because I didn’t trust him,” McKay told the inquiry, referring to his treatment of inspectors and previous disciplinary actions. use of personal telephone to deal with CFMEU complaints.
In McKay’s 137-page witness statement package released to the inquest, he said the then CFMEU secretary, Ravbar, “saw the answer to every problem was to restore Ms Burgess” to her most powerful position.
“In almost every conversation I had with him, he would bring up the issue of putting Ms Burgess back in charge of the inspectorate,” McKay said, including words to the effect of “if you’d agreed to take Helen back, this wouldn’t be a problem”.
Ravbar also pushed then Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace to do the same in a meeting with McKay. In a September 2023 conversation with another former CFMEU official, Kurt Pauls, McKay recalled him referring to Burgess as “a friend of the CFMEU”.
“I didn’t trust him and he wasn’t well liked by OIR but that, in itself, is not a reason to terminate the employment of a full-time public service employee,” McKay said.
“If it was the case that I could just remove him from OIR, I would, but at the time there wasn’t enough to keep firing him.”
Instead, McKay said Burgess was closely supervised in a “low-risk” and non-powerful role. Despite Wisdom also not trusting him and wanting to transfer him, McKay said no other operatives believed him either, and their units were either a bad fit or a serious threat to Burgess.
Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Jarrod Bleijie told parliament Burgess had been suspended and his home raided by the CCC.
After Burgess was removed from his position as chief inspector and as part of an agreement between the office and the police, the CFMEU’s complaint was directed to the regional directors.
When a proposal was made to introduce a new dispute resolution system specifically for the construction industry, Pauls told McKay at a meeting that if Burgess was not reinstated, the union would not use the 1300 number and would call another senior worker directly.
This, finally, ended up being McKay who said that he then had to submit information from all such calls to the relevant team despite all this delaying action in unity and wasting his time while leading an office of 900 people.
Despite this, McKay continued, saying he thought it was better for him than another member of his staff and that not doing so would be a “nuclear option” that the union could claim was being ignored by the regulator.
In its five weeks of hearings so far, the inquiry has also heard evidence from important sector and union statisticsbefore touching Cross River Railway project and disposal of principle of state construction.
The government of Crisafulli launched 20 million dollar investigation last year after reporting by this masthead and 60 minutes in crime, corruption and misconduct in the union and sector throughout the country.
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Matt Dennien is a Brisbane Times reporter covering government politics and the public service. He has previously worked in Tasmanian newspapers and Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. Contact him safely on Waves @mattdennien.15Connect through email address.
