Thiess, $100,000 a year for the AWU courtesy of Nick Jukes "the embodiment of the Thiess culture"
Wednesday, 15 July 2015
On 12 May 2014 Counsel Assisting the Trade Union Royal Commission opened the hearing into the AWU Workplace Reform Assocation Inc. He told the Commission:
The successful tenderer for the Dawesville Channel Project was Thiess Contractors Pty Ltd or one or more of its related entities (Thiess).
Once Thiess had obtained the contract to construct the Dawesville Channel Project it entered into an arrangement with the Association for the provision of services relating to workplace reform and safety, as set out in a letter dated 16 March 1992 from Thiess to the Association.
From that point the Commission operated on the assumption that Thiess was genuine in seeking training and workplace reform services, he went on to say:
Presumably on the incorrect assumption that such services had been provided, Thiess paid each invoice issued to it by the Association.
The Commission's Interim Report maintained that line - Thiess executives were victims of deception by Wilson and Blewitt.
Here's Neil Chenoweth writing in the AFR on 16 June, 2014
Mr Stoljar has already cleared senior executives of any knowledge of any fraud at its Dawesville Channel project.
“Unsurprisingly, senior management at Thiess was not aware of precisely what was happening on the ground at the Dawesville Channel project," Mr Stoljar said in his opening statement last Tuesday.
When hearings resume in Perth next week, the commission will explore how Thiess – for three years from 1992 – paid $2000 a week for a training officer at the Dawesville Channel construction site who Mr Stoljar says, never appeared.
And how after almost two years of no-shows at Dawesville Channel, Thiess signed up for a second training officer at a project at Melbourne Water in October 1993.
In total, Thiess paid $309,064 to the WRA for Dawesville and $112,680 for the Melbourne Water safety officer.
Fast forward just over one year and the Royal Commission has a much more realistic view about false invoicing. Mr Stoljar's first comments about Thiess and the Eastlink project in Victoria were to Bill Shorten on 9 July2015
3 MR STOLJAR: Q. Mr Shorten, as you can see from the
34 schedule that is now Shorten MFI-10, the total amount,
35 excluding GST, paid by Thiess John Holland to AWU Vic for
36 the financial years identified was just over $300,000.
37 I say that by way of introduction, just to put it in
38 context, but probably the best thing to do is to go through
39 some of these invoices and have a look at them.
It's much clearer when you add it up. $100,000 per annum, $300,000 for the life of the project. The Commission's staff even put a table together setting out all the invoices, just as we did several years ago analysing Thesis's $100,000 per annum to the AWU Workplace Reform Association.
Nick Jukes was responsible for the Dawesville Channel deal with Bruce Wilson's AWU:
NO TRAINING TOOK PLACE
Former Thiess WA manager Nick Jukes told the commission that he agreed with Mr Wilson to match an arrangement for onsite training that Thiess had negotiated with the CFMEU.
The letter was formalised by Mr Jukes in a letter dated March 16, 1992 after he had moved to Queensland, and stated the billing agreement had been in force since the start of January 1992.
He was still at Thiess when the Victorian Government awarded it Australia's largest road project, the Eastlink motorway, retiring in 2006. As one of his staff said in this article, Nick Jukes was the embodiment of the Thiess culture.
It takes two to give and receive bribes - and when government money funds the projects we all pay. The Royal Commission should take a very close look at the culture of Thiess.