Geoffrey Watson had thought it was a “storm in a teacup”. When the corruption-busting barrister was first flown into Queensland by CFMEU administrators to look into the state branch’s use of violence after probes into organised crime infiltration of the Victorian arm, he’d done some prep.

“I’d read accounts of these things that were going on, and on paper, they looked so silly, so childish, schoolyard bullies, and I thought this is nothing,” he recounted this week. “It was then that I spent some weeks interviewing people when I realised I was wrong, and it was quite different.”

Those more than 55 interviews over three months, conducted with handwritten notes, would go on to form the June report that prompted the Crisafulli government to launch its powerful Commission of Inquiry into the

See Full Page