Charges of assault against CFMEU organiser Justin Steele dropped after complaint against him withdrawn

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A fifth construction union official has had criminal charges made by the trade union royal commission taskforce dropped.

The Australian federal police’s union taskforce charged the Queensland Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union organiser Justin Steele with assault over an incident at a building site in May 2015.

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Police alleged Steele struck a female builder-developer’s arm and pushed her shoulder during a standoff at a South Brisbane site on 14 May. The charges against him were dropped on Wednesday.



An AFP spokeswoman told Guardian Australia two charges of assault and one of breach of bail conditions were dropped “based on the withdrawal of the complaint”.

The CFMEU’s national construction secretary, Dave Noonan, said: “Steele has maintained all along he did nothing wrong. He had a disagreement with a building developer over getting onto a site.”

The union said Steele had been taking photographs of unsafe practices on a building site “when the developer accosted him, demanding to give up his phone”.

A week later police visited his home with a warrant permitting the seizure of his mobile phone.

The AFP spokeswoman said its union taskforce had no comment on the decision to withdraw the complaint nor the statements made by the CFMEU.

The failed criminal case is the fifth arising out of the trade union royal commission and its associated police taskforces.

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Earlier this month the director of public prosecutions dropped charges against the CFMEU’s ACT secretary, Dean Hall, because the case fell outside the permitted statutory time period.

Hall had been charged over alleged intimidation of a WorkSafe inspector on a Claxton construction site in Canberra in 2013.

The other three failed cases involved dropped charges against the CFMEU ACT official Johnny Lomax and the Queensland CFMEU assistant secretary Andrew Sutherland and a not guilty verdict for the NSW official Michael Greenfield.

The first criminal case arising out of the royal commission to have succeeded was the case against former ACT organiser Fihi Kivalu, who pleaded guilty on 10 March to blackmail charges.

Police arrested Kivalu after evidence before the union royal commission in July 2015 at which he admitted receiving $150,000 in “gifts” from employers before he left the union in 2014. Builders gave evidence they made payments to keep the CFMEU from disrupting their work sites.