In August 2024 the federal government did something nobody in Melbourne thought they'd ever see. It took the construction arm of the CFMEU off its own officials and handed every branch to an administrator, barrister Mark Irving KC. That happened after sources alleged bikies and underworld figures had made themselves at home on union-backed building sites, including the taxpayer-funded Big Build.
And the man the government's own investigator kept coming back to was a name every Melbourne crime reader already knows. Mick Gatto. Gatto has always said he's an industrial mediator who looks after builders and doesn't work for the union. The investigator, Geoffrey Watson SC, saw it very differently, and he put it in writing.
