A CFMEU whistleblower personally warned Anthony Albanese about the union’s suspected links to organised crime during a meeting in his office more than a decade ago in which the former official also detailed fears for his family’s safety following a spate of murders he believed were connected to the building and construction industry.
Andrew Quirk walked into Albanese’s Sydney electoral office in inner-west Marrickville unannounced on the morning of February 3, 2014, seeking a meeting with the then shadow minister for infrastructure and transport over concerns that details of an internal union inquiry into corruption were being leaked to notorious underworld figures.
Quirk admits he hadn’t made an appointment but says Albanese and his then chief of staff and a former assistant secretary of the NSW Labor Party Damien O’Connor readily took Quirk into a special meeting room. After all, they had known him for years.
Quirk had just left Marrickville police station where he had filed a report over concerns for the safety of his family after he was publicly identified in media reports at the time as one of the authors revealing confidential allegations of organised crime links to the union’s NSW branch.
Seated on a low couch with a coffee table between them, Quirk then handed Albanese a letter he had recently sent to the Construction Forestry and Maritime Employees Union’s national secretary Michael O’Connor that outlined his concerns about the relationship between the union and outlaw bikie gangs and criminal syndicates.
In that letter, he raised the alarm bell that for the first time since the 1960s, the union was at risk of being penetrated by the mob.
Quirk now wants it known that he had tried to alert the Labor Party’s parliamentary wing as to what was going on inside the construction division of the CFMEU’s NSW branch more than a decade ago but little was done to pursue it.
“Both of them (Albanese and Damien O’Connor) I had known for years,” Quirk recalls to The Australian. “Albo was stunned but professional about it … the best way I could put it is that he put on a poker face.
“I went to them because I wanted them held to account.
“I was angry, I was scared for my family, I told them I was worried about my family. I might have been stressed.”
The meeting, in which Quirk laid out his concerns, lasted barely 10 minutes. Albanese then asked Quirk if he wanted him to pass the information on to then opposition leader Bill Shorten.
“My heart dropped,” Quirk says. “I thought he has just given Shorten a hospital pass.”
Quirk says that not long after the meeting, he received a call from Queensland Labor senator Mark Furner, who confirmed to him that Shorten’s office had received the letter and it was being passed on to Australian Federal Police..
Quirk had known Furner, now a minister in the Queensland Labor government, from earlier days when he went to Queensland to work as a union delegate for the National Union of Workers at the Golden Circle factory in Brisbane.
Quirk’s subsequent battle with the CFMEU is well documented. He was sacked from the union in 2015 for going public about his claims in an expose on the ABC’s 7.30 alongside fellow whistleblower Brian (Jock) Miller in late 2014.
Last year, Quirk and Miller won a lengthy court battle against the union for unfair dismissal – a case Quirk’s solicitor, Chris McArdle, says would have cost the union more than $1m in legal fees to defend.
The settlement barely covered their own expenses.
Prior to the union being put into administration, the CFMEU had indicated it was considering taking the judgment to the High Court to try to have it overturned.
Quirk has sought to now raise the 2014 meeting with Albanese because of what he claims is a blanket of denial by the parliamentary and organisational wing of the ALP that they hadn’t been aware of the allegations of criminal links to the union back then.
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A CFMEU whistleblower personally warned Anthony Albanese about the union’s suspected links to organised crime during a meeting in his office more than a decade ago in which the former official also detailed fears for his family’s safety following a spate of murders he believed were connected to the building and construction industry.
Andrew Quirk walked into Albanese’s Sydney electoral office in inner-west Marrickville unannounced on the morning of February 3, 2014, seeking a meeting with the then shadow minister for infrastructure and transport over concerns that details of an internal union inquiry into corruption were being leaked to notorious underworld figures.
Quirk admits he hadn’t made an appointment but says Albanese and his then chief of staff and a former assistant secretary of the NSW Labor Party Damien O’Connor readily took Quirk into a special meeting room. After all, they had known him for years.
Quirk had just left Marrickville police station where he had filed a report over concerns for the safety of his family after he was publicly identified in media reports at the time as one of the authors revealing confidential allegations of organised crime links to the union’s NSW branch.
Seated on a low couch with a coffee table between them, Quirk then handed Albanese a letter he had recently sent to the Construction Forestry and Maritime Employees Union’s national secretary Michael O’Connor that outlined his concerns about the relationship between the union and outlaw bikie gangs and criminal syndicates.
In that letter, he raised the alarm bell that for the first time since the 1960s, the union was at risk of being penetrated by the mob.
Quirk now wants it known that he had tried to alert the Labor Party’s parliamentary wing as to what was going on inside the construction division of the CFMEU’s NSW branch more than a decade ago but little was done to pursue it.
“Both of them (Albanese and Damien O’Connor) I had known for years,” Quirk recalls to The Australian. “Albo was stunned but professional about it … the best way I could put it is that he put on a poker face.
“I went to them because I wanted them held to account.
“I was angry, I was scared for my family, I told them I was worried about my family. I might have been stressed.”
The meeting, in which Quirk laid out his concerns, lasted barely 10 minutes. Albanese then asked Quirk if he wanted him to pass the information on to then opposition leader Bill Shorten.
“My heart dropped,” Quirk says. “I thought he has just given Shorten a hospital pass.”
Quirk says that not long after the meeting, he received a call from Queensland Labor senator Mark Furner, who confirmed to him that Shorten’s office had received the letter and it was being passed on to Australian Federal Police..
Quirk had known Furner, now a minister in the Queensland Labor government, from earlier days when he went to Queensland to work as a union delegate for the National Union of Workers at the Golden Circle factory in Brisbane.
Quirk’s subsequent battle with the CFMEU is well documented. He was sacked from the union in 2015 for going public about his claims in an expose on the ABC’s 7.30 alongside fellow whistleblower Brian (Jock) Miller in late 2014.
Last year, Quirk and Miller won a lengthy court battle against the union for unfair dismissal – a case Quirk’s solicitor, Chris McArdle, says would have cost the union more than $1m in legal fees to defend.
The settlement barely covered their own expenses.
Prior to the union being put into administration, the CFMEU had indicated it was considering taking the judgment to the High Court to try to have it overturned.
Quirk has sought to now raise the 2014 meeting with Albanese because of what he claims is a blanket of denial by the parliamentary and organisational wing of the ALP that they hadn’t been aware of the allegations of criminal links to the union back then.