A former top public servant has wept as she told an inquiry the CFMEU stalked her family, tracking her children to bus stops and netball games until she quit her job in fear.
Former Transport and Main Roads deputy director‑general Amanda Yeates, who later led development of the Maroochydore City Centre, told the CFMEU Commission of Inquiry she believed union figures were following her children and knew where they lived, travelled and played sport.
“There were three or four occasions where comments were made about my children,” Ms Yeates said through tears on Thursday.
“These comments made it apparent that the CFMEU knew who my children were, their locations, and what they had been doing that day.”
On one occasion, she alleged, CFMEU official Jade Ingham suddenly used her daughter’s name and remarked she had played “a really good game at netball that day”, the inquiry heard.
In another meeting, an unidentified man who turned up with Mr Ingham made an offhand comment that her school‑age daughter was now “getting a lift to school” instead of catching the bus.
She told the inquiry she became so afraid of what might happen to her children that she changed their travel routines, stopped them going out alone and ultimately resigned.
“I made the decision that the only way I could make this stop was to remove myself from the public service,” she said.
“I felt that if the CFMEU no longer felt that I was a person that they could influence, that it would stop.”
The commission heard Ms Yeates left Transport and Main Roads in July 2022 after more than 25 years in the public sector, including overseeing the Queensland Transport and Roads Investment Program, now worth $41 billion over four years.
Ms Yeates later spent three years as chief executive of SunCentral, the organisation established to oversee the design and delivery of the Maroochydore City Centre. She joined the organisation in July 2022 and later stepped down after a period overseeing major infrastructure and planning work in the precinct.
Senior counsel assisting Edward Gisonda said Ms Yeates’ promising career “came to an end” because of the CFMEU’s behaviour.
Commissioner Stuart Wood also heard graphic evidence of the verbal abuse Ms Yeates said she endured in meetings with the union.
“Mr Ingham, for example, would … call us incompetent, lazy fat cats,” she said.
“The worst escalation was when he called us c***s.”
Ms Yeates said that in one meeting at the CFMEU’s Bowen Hills office she was called the vile slur at least four times.
When she objected, she said Mr Ingham replied: “If you’re going to act like a c***, that’s how I’ll treat you.”
She told the inquiry she and another female Transport and Main Roads executive walked out of a later meeting after more abuse from the union officials, only to be warned that their reaction was “unacceptable under any circumstances”.
Earlier, Ms Yeates told the commission her first meeting with CFMEU boss Michael Ravbar in former ALP transport minister Mark Bailey’s 1 William Street office also left her stunned.
She said Mr Ravbar’s first words to her were: “You’re a woman, get me a glass of water.”
“I haven’t had that sort of behaviour since the 1980s, so I guess I was a little shocked,” she said.
The alleged intimidation and stalking unfolded as the former Labor government pushed ahead with the union‑backed Best Practice Industry Conditions policy on major transport projects before the 2020 state election.
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Internal Transport and Main Roads briefing notes, read to the inquiry, warned the policy could drive wage rates about 11 per cent higher than existing deals, add up to $192 million to project costs over four years and force other Queensland road and rail projects to be shelved.
Despite those concerns, Ms Yeates said her department was ultimately told BPIC was government policy and they had to “find a way to make the policy work”.
