The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has blamed human error for a whistleblower email seeking to expose CFMEU standover tactics getting lost in the mail.
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The email, sent to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan by a small Indigenous construction labour hire firm in 2022, detailed serious threats of extreme violence, intimidation and unlawful union black bans.
The 20-page PDF document contained transcripts of violent threats by a CFMEU organiser, a recording of which was played on Nine's 60 Minutes, which also detailed alleged organised crime links and kickbacks.
"This item of correspondence was not provided to the Prime Minister's Office," a spokesperson said in a statement provided to ACM, publisher of this masthead.
"As a result of the identified error, procedures were reviewed and updated to ensure all correspondence is appropriately considered and referred to a relevant agency where possible."
The whistleblower, who initially sent the correspondence to an inactive email address, then opted to send it through a "contact the PM" form on Mr Albanese's official website.
This form, which has attracted more than 80,000 submissions in the year to date, has the disclaimer: "We read and consider all items of correspondence, but not all items will receive a response."
It is understood a member of PM&C's Ministerial Correspondence team, which has an Average Staffing Level of 15 full-time employees, incorrectly referred the email to another agency and marked it "not for further action".
"Due to the volume received each year, correspondence is managed through established departmental processes and not all items receive a response," the PM&C spokesperson said.
"Correspondence is prioritised based on a number of factors and is often managed by departmental staff, who can respond on behalf of the Prime Minister if required."
The process "includes consultation and referral to other Commonwealth agencies and departments, where appropriate," the spokesperson said.
"In this case, the item of correspondence should have been referred to the relevant department but was not."
Typically, when correspondence is received and deemed worthy of further investigation, it is sent to the policy team within the department most relevant to the subject matter.
"This item of correspondence should have been referred to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations," the spokesperson said.
PM&C confirmed human error was to blame and the process of sorting through the reams of correspondence received from the public "does not rely on artificial intelligence".
'Albo knows about it': Lost email beside the point, journalist says
For investigative journalist Nick McKenzie, who exposed CFMEU misbehaviour along with colleagues at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes, the email's aborted journey is "a little bit beside the point".
"There is no doubt Albanese through his channels, knows about what's been going on," Mr McKenzie told ABC host David Speers' Insiders podcast.
"In the last six months, as we've investigated this, the consistent comment from senior ALP ministers and insiders is, 'We know what's going on, keep going, because it's corrupt and rotten - and, by the way, Albo knows about it, and he does not like what's going on. And when the evidence is incontrovertible, we think that the Prime Minister will act'."
He said any politician with a computer should know about the problems in the CFMEU, which a simple Google search would highlight.
Housing Industry Association managing director Jocelyn Martin agreed.
"We fail to understand why any government representative would be shocked by these latest revelations and why it has taken this long to get action on these issues that have been identified in a number of past royal commissions, court cases and various government inquiries," she said.
Prime minister says administrator will 'clean up' the CFMEU
The Albanese government is backing the Fair Work Commission to appoint an administrator to take over the CFMEU, with the power to appoint and fire officials, to clean up the union.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has pledged to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission if he wins the next election, due by May.
The Prime Minister on Monday said the ABCC "didn't do real well" at stamping out union misbehaviour under the previous Coalition government.
"This commission was in place while [then CFMEU national secretary] John Setka was increasing his power in the CFMEU," Mr Albanese told ABC Sydney radio.
"None of this was exposed by the ABCC and it was occurring while it was in place."
The approach of appointing administrators would "make sure that there is a clean-up of the industry, to make sure that you don't have criminal elements infiltrating the union or indeed the industry".