Pod Insights ABC Rewind 03 | Conspiracy | The farmers come to town About this episode After the collapse of the Dubai plan Patrick Stevedore's boss Chris Corrigan turns to Plan B, training fresh-faced farmers to work as wharfies. The MUA suspect the farmers will take their jobs and so create chaos at the gates of Patricks’ Webb Dock to stop the farmers getting through. Meanwhile the heat remains on Corrigan to fess up to his masterminding of Dubai.
Transcript 5,589 words · 29 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Someone handed me a secret recording.
0:02 Speaker 01 We've got to get rid of all those loose ends. Okay?
0:05 Speaker 00 For years now, I've been investigating this guy.
0:07 Speaker 01 What, your stabber in the neck with a knife?
0:09 Speaker 00 He's known as Mr Big. His tentacles spread to the very heart of the justice system.
0:13 Speaker 01 I don't just need it under the carpet. I need it to be fixed.
0:18 Speaker 00 I'm Alicia Bridges. I find out who he really is in Mr Big, a new true crime podcast from Unravel. Search for Unravel now on the ABC Listen app.
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0:37 Speaker 03 A warning that this episode of Rewind contains strong language.
0:51 Speaker 04 The battle bus is, if you've seen any Mad Max movies or any Hollywood production of a bus that's been armoured up and outfitted for war, this is what we were in.
1:03 Speaker 05 It's the 1st of February 1998, and it's only a couple of weeks ago Glenn Adams was milking cows. Now, he's on a bus heading to work.
1:15 Speaker 04 It had small mesh screwed to the outside of the windows. It had cardboard stuck to the inside of the windows, so it was totally pitch black inside. We could not see out the windows.
1:25 Speaker 05 Glenn's excited about his new job, working on the wharves in Melbourne.
1:29 Speaker 04 And then all of a sudden, you start hearing from the distance this chant and then you hear, "M U A, here to stay. M U A, here to stay."
1:36 Speaker 05 But when he signed up, he did not expect this.
1:40 Speaker 04 And then the rocks or the stones or the bricks or whatever it is that's coming to, they start thudding on the outside of the bus and the windows. And you hear windows smashing every now and then. That's what the cardboard was for, to protect us.
1:51 Speaker 05 The people throwing the bricks are the warffits, who've been locked out of their workplace so that Glenn and the crew he's with can go in.
1:59 Speaker 04 It just progressively got louder and louder and louder, until you could feel the bus rocking as we're driving through.
2:06 Speaker 05 He doesn't know it yet, but Glenn has found himself in the middle of the biggest industrial dispute in Australia's living memory.
2:18 Speaker 04 And then, yeah, once you got through the picket line, you knew because it sort of gradually disappeared into the distance behind you again. And the gates were shut behind us, obviously. And off we went to work, hopped off the bus.
2:28 Speaker 05 I'm Jan Fran. This is Conspiracy: War on the Waterfront, episode three, The Farmers Come to Town.
2:38 Speaker 05 On the last episode...
2:39 Speaker 06 Around 70 recruits are booked to fly to Dubai in the Middle East tonight for training, returning to Australia in the new year.
2:46 Speaker 05 Patrick's plan to train a replacement workforce in Dubai was dramatically revealed in Parliament.
2:52 Speaker 07 What knowledge do you have of this covert operation to recruit a force of industrial mercenaries from the ranks of the military? And when did you first become aware of it?
3:00 Speaker 05 The whole fiasco went belly up.
3:02 Speaker 08 The visas were cancelled for the 76 former SAS personnel and they were booted out. It was a clusterfuck. The only way to say it.
3:10 Speaker 05 And the Howard government denied knowing anything about the plan.
3:14 Speaker 09 No, we're not involved. And it was news to me until the Labor Party told us that question time.
3:19 Speaker 05 So now, with his Dubai plan in tatters, Patrick's Chris Corrigan needs a Plan B. And help is on its way in the form of an unlikely ally.
3:31 Speaker 05 It's Sunday, and Bruce Townsend's sitting down to lunch.
3:35 Speaker 10 We had a roast.
3:36 Speaker 05 Sadly, his roast is interrupted.
3:39 Speaker 10 I can remember that someone rang me, someone at Patrick's, and he asked me if we could come up with some trucks and trailers, drop decks.
3:48 Speaker 05 And Bruce is just the guy to find those trucks and have them ready in Melbourne, like tomorrow.
3:56 Speaker 10 There's a magazine that every truck driver knows about called the Book of Dreams: Deals on Wheels. Back then, there was no Google. So I went through the Deals on Wheels, rang every truck, prime mover and trailer that I could find near Melbourne, and said if they were at Brooklyn, first thing Monday morning, I'd buy their truck or I'd buy their trailer. And a crane, I bought a crane, an 80-tonne cold.
4:18 Speaker 05 Bruce is buying up all those trucks in Melbourne, but he's got to do it on the sly. He doesn't want word getting out to the unions about Corrigan's Plan B. Then, two days later, completely out of the blue, the wharffies working the twilight shift at Patrick's web doc in Melbourne are told not to come into work. But they head down anyway.
4:42 Speaker 11 By the time I got there, there was a big padlock on the gate and there was maybe four or 500 of our, both the word had gone out around Port Melbourne and all that.
4:50 Speaker 05 Mick O'Leary is an organiser with the MUA, the Maritime Union of Australia.
4:54 Speaker 11 Then out of the blue, literally 50 police turned up. And the head policeman come up and said to me, you know, are you in charge? I said, yes, I am. He said, look, I have to tell you, he said, at 2 o'clock this morning, he said, we're going to be bringing through security guards, workers and equipment for the new operation at number five, Webb Dock.
5:20 Speaker 05 A new operation? Webb Dock's small. The equipment's old. It's actually been losing money for its owner, Patrick's, for a while. So what new operation are they talking about? At 2am, when Bruce Townsend turns up with all those trucks and cranes and buses full of security guards, the Wharfies are ready for them.
5:45 Speaker 11 So I get on the first bus and they're all 18, 19 year old kids, honestly, and just absolutely white in fear of their life, okay? And they said, look, we've all been on the dole and we got told if we don't take this job, we'll be taken off the dole.
6:02 Speaker 05 What is Chris Corrigan up to?
6:06 Speaker 06 And we're now joined by the managing director of Patrick Partners, Chris Corrigan. You're prepared for a showdown? We have to be prepared for a showdown.
6:13 Speaker 05 And backing him in that showdown are, of all people, farmers.
6:19 Speaker 12 It appears the powerful Patrick Corporation is helping the National Farmers' Federation set up its own non-unionised stevedoring outfit. It's understood Patrick will give the farmers space on its wharfs and use of cranes and other equipment.
6:35 Speaker 04 I was working on a dairy farm up in the Golden Valley, up near Coiabrum, just working on the parents' farm, milking cows. We were coming out of a drought. There was a bit of a hard slog for farming and raising cash and whatnot.
6:49 Speaker 05 Remember Glenn on the Mad Max bus heading into his first day of work? Well, just a few weeks ago, he saw an ad in the newspaper with a very vague job description. Sound familiar? "Looking for workers for the waterfront, training provided." He rings the number and he gets a call back.
7:07 Speaker 04 They were looking for farmers because farmers are pretty adept at turning a hand to anything. So, you know, give us a piece of machinery in 10 minutes and we can sort of figure out how to use it and use it pretty confidently.
7:18 Speaker 05 And what convinces Glenn the job is legit? He's told the government's behind it.
7:24 Speaker 04 The government is funding and facilitating the setting up of a non-union workforce to work alongside the unions on the docks.
7:33 Speaker 05 Hmm, that also sounds familiar.
7:36 Speaker 04 This WebDoc 5 has been leased by the National Farmers' Federation and we will be trained and here you go, we'll give you seven or 800 bucks a week. So, who wouldn't, to be honest?
7:49 Speaker 05 It's less than a wharfie would earn, but it's more money than Glenn's ever seen. He's stoked to be heading to Melbourne for an adventure. But why would the National Farmers' Federation, the NFF, why would it want to go into the stevedoring business? Dr Geraldine Fellas, our series historian. Geraldine, what's gone on between the wharfies and the NFF before this?
8:14 Speaker 13 So, there is a big beef, no pun intended.
8:18 Speaker 05 I think you intended that pun, but we'll move on.
8:20 Speaker 13 You're right, I did. So, there is a big beef between the MUA and the National Farmers' Federation. This is like deep, long animosity. To understand it, you kind of have to understand the National Farmers' Federation. I'll just call them the NFF.
8:35 Speaker 05 Yep.
8:35 Speaker 13 So, they're a conservative, like politically conservative, industrially conservative organisation that really represent big business farmers. And these farmers rely on the waterfront to get their product all around the world. Wharfies' conditions and their pay, they see that as adding additional cost to their product. And that cuts into their profits. So there's a kind of natural animosity between these two organisations. And this isn't the first time that the NFF have involved themselves in industrial disputes. They've also supplied non-union labour to Shearer's strikes and meat workers' strikes in the 1980s.
9:16 Speaker 13 So, you know, they've got form when it comes to trying to replace union workforces.
9:28 Speaker 05 It's early January 1998, just weeks after the Patrick's Dubai plan blows up. Three men linked to the NFF quietly register a company called Producers and Consumers Stevedoring, PCS for short. And it's PCS that gives the job to our dairy farmer Glen. It's also PCS that moves into web dock in the middle of the night with old mate Bruce Townsend and all his trucks and cranes. The head of the MUA is John Coombs. He's a pugnacious, nuggety man, uncomfortable in a suit. And he holds a press conference outside the locked gate at the docks.
10:07 Speaker 09 Patrick's can't be contacted today. All of their people who are on the phone to us all day and every day have suddenly gone missing. And we've got people working there who are apparently going to be summarily dismissed.
10:18 Speaker 14 So what do you mean, these are the average farmer out there who's probably worried about their exports?
10:23 Speaker 09 It's no place in industrial relations for this sort of skullduggery and potential thuggery, and they ought to butt out.
10:30 Speaker 05 Lots of wharfies are pushing Coombs to let them do what they've always done: go out on a mass strike. Even wharfies working for the other big Stevedoring company, P&O, want to go out in sympathy and shut down every dock in the country. Create chaos, but they can't. So Geraldine, why is it that these MUA workers can't just go on strike?
10:52 Speaker 13 So in 1996, Peter Wreth introduces the Workplace Relations Act. There's a lot of changes in there. But for this story, what's important is he's made it harder to go on strike. And it's important to note here as well that it has been getting harder and harder through the 80s and 90s to go on strike. And a lot of those changes came under the Hawke Keating Labour governments. So it's not all down to this act by any means. But this act is really important because part of it is massively increasing the prohibition and the penalties for quote unquote sympathy strikes. So that's when one workplace or a group of workers go out in solidarity with another workplace or group of workers.
11:34 Speaker 13 So for example, PNO going out in solidarity with the Patrick's workers. It's a really powerful tool because it has the potential to hit the economy hard and create a big impact. And Wreth made it that much harder for unions to use. So the other big and important change in this act is they ban compulsory unionism. What that usually looked like at the time was an agreement between an employer and the union that when you sign on to the job, so for example, when you start working at the ABC, you also at the same time join up to the union. And so that is banned after 1996.
12:12 Speaker 05 Right, which meant that if you wanted to join a union, you could. If you didn't want to join a union, well, you didn't have to when you signed your contract.
12:18 Speaker 13 Yeah, more or less.
12:20 Speaker 05 So they don't go on strike. But they do set up a picket line to block non-union labour going to work. The picket's only effective if people are there 24/7. So the Wharfies come out in force. It's a tight community. For so many of them, like Mick O'Leary, it's their life, their politics, their identity.
12:43 Speaker 11 My father was a Wharfie of over 35 years. My two brothers were Wharfies. My older brother's two sons were Wharfies. Stephen O'Ring was in the blood. The first pay packet I got, I remember they gave me $274 in cash. And this is 1974 and I never went back to union. Anything like that, that was the sort of life for me. It was great, give you a lot of freedom, the camaraderie. You felt like you were in a family in the waterfront work.
13:17 Speaker 05 The Wharfies are doing everything they can to stop the buses full of workers being trained by the National Farmers Federation from getting through the gates of Webb Dock.
13:28 Speaker 15 That was fun, getting through the picket line with them there when they're all so ruddy rowdy. Some days there wouldn't be many there, some days there would be hundreds there.
13:38 Speaker 05 Billy Pregnall's working with Deals on Wheels truck buyer Bruce Townsend. Billy's a musician and a prison guard, which, well, it's an interesting Venn diagram, isn't it? At least he was a prison guard until, so he says, he was sacked for being too violent.
13:53 Speaker 15 I was one of the earliest ones participating in it, so I got the nickname of Grandad.
14:00 Speaker 05 Billy's in charge of running the gauntlet, driving these busloads of non-union workers through the picket lines each morning.
14:06 Speaker 15 We had to notify the police every time we were coming through. So when they seen the police coming down, they knew that the scabby dogs were coming, and then they would all come up.
14:17 Speaker 16 And when the bus comes out, we'll just treat them with the contempt they deserve.
14:22 Speaker 15 We were forced to put perspex over the windscreen of the trucks, so when they threw chains and bricks at it, they didn't break. We were forced to take the steps off the side of the truck so they couldn't climb up and jump up on the steps and with a motorbike chain and smash your windscreen or your side window and all that sort of thing.
14:48 Speaker 05 The controlled mood of previous days turned ugly this morning.
14:54 Speaker 05 A rock thrown by a worker shattered a bus window, injuring three security guards. A female guard was taken to the IND hospital to be treated for glass splinters in her eye. This is a wake-up call for the union leaders.
15:08 Speaker 17 This is Australia, guys. We're protesting peacefully. Remember that?
15:13 Speaker 18 My name's Anne Davies. I've been a journalist for many, many years. At the time of the waterfront dispute, I was working for the Sydney Morning Herald. Greg Comby, who was the assistant ACTU secretary at the time, he came down and he stood in pouring rain, beseeching...
15:31 Speaker 18 The MUA members not to attack the workers coming in. They had to stand back and let these buses of, you know, what they regarded as scabs arrive on the waterfront. And, you know, this was a proud history they had of, you know, no non-union workers on the wharves and there they were arriving.
15:52 Speaker 05 Here's truck fire Bruce Townsend.
15:54 Speaker 10 They called me King Scab. I mean, they can call me whatever they like, but it wasn't really accurate because we were never there to take anyone's job. We were just there to keep things running. We were paid to go and do a job. We weren't paid to antagonise, become part of the problem, make it worse, feed the media. That's not what we were paid for. There was a pub there that the unions used to frequent and I didn't go there, but I'm told there was quite a bit of wall space dedicated to comments about and pictures of me. I suppose I should be flattered, but in light of what they probably wrote, maybe not.
16:29 Speaker 05 Bruce has been branded King Scab for a reason. The Wharves recognise him from other disputes where he crossed the picket line as non-union labour and, well, let's just say Bruce doesn't love unions.
16:43 Speaker 10 My wife reckons it started because I hold a grudge. When I was 22, 23, I got a contract with the local power authority to trim all the trees over hanging the power lines up and down the roads. And it had always been done by employees of what was in, I think, the Hydroelectric Commission, HEC. And the union didn't want us doing it. They didn't want it to go to contract. So the ETU, which is the Electrical Trades Union, did everything they could to stop us, make life miserable and just be as disruptive as they possibly could. We had two crews of six men and we all had raincoats.
17:24 Speaker 10 It wasn't raining at that time, but they demanded everyone stop work until I went and bought full wet weather gear and gum boots, trousers, the whole lot, to issue before they would start work again. Things like that all the time. So that developed a special spot for me for union standover. I hold a grudge.
17:47 Speaker 05 Down at Webb Dock, the picket line's working. It's too hard to get the buses through. So Bruce Townsend starts bringing the NFF trainees in by boat. While the MUA's picket line is getting more disciplined, others find different ways to freak out the NFF trainees.
18:06 Speaker 10 They started dropping Besser blocks off the Westgate Bridge and trying to hit our boats. Well, thankfully, they weren't very good shots. Whether that was intentional or not, I mean, they must have realised what would happen if they hit somebody with a Besser block at that height. So maybe it was just to gain attention, show off in front of their mates. Who knows? But it was a bit scary. Like, we went to the police and they were not too concerned. It took political pressure from way above my pay grade to get that to stop.
18:40 Speaker 05 But the non-union workers like to give as good as they get. Billy Pregnall, the guy driving the battle bus, he likes to taunt the MUA picketers back. He even gets some T-shirts printed with a truck running over some skeletons. The caption reads, "MUA Speed Humps." And another time, he recognises one of the picketers. It's his mate's brother-in-law. They met at a barbecue.
19:03 Speaker 15 Someone opened the fence. I said, "There you're going, Alistair." And he looked at me. Another Sunday, "Don't talk to that so-and-so, he's a scab, yeah." Alistair says, "What are you doing in there?" Oh, I said, "You know how it is." I said, "You've got to work for the dull, you know, yeah."
19:21 Speaker 05 After a few days, Patrick's unlocks the gate and the MUA Webb Dock workers are back at work. Except now, they have to work right next to the guys they call scabs, the PCS workers. It's tense. There's a fence between them. And so much more. Geraldine?
19:40 Speaker 13 Yeah, there is. So in 1928, there was a big dispute on the waterfront. And in that dispute, there was a wharfie, Alan Whittaker, who was actually a Gallipoli veteran who was shot and killed by the police. So this was an incredibly emotional dispute for the MUA that was held big in their history. The non-union workforce then was called PCS, Permanents and Casuals. So in 1998, when the NFF set up their non-union labour force, they called them PCS, Producers and Consumers. For the NFF to call their workforce PCS was kind of a massive provocation and a real kind of salt in a deep wound.
20:23 Speaker 05 Right, and a middle finger to the union labour as well.
20:27 Speaker 13 A massive middle finger.
20:29 Speaker 19 Hid your face, look, you've got to hide your face. Why? Why are you hiding your face?
20:34 Speaker 05 At the time all this is going on, our farmer Glen Adams can't understand why the wharfies are so angry at the NFF trainees. But now, he gets it.
20:43 Speaker 04 It never really dawned on me or never really even entered my mind that they were, to use my own words, inhabitants of that dock prior to us being there. It's a farming organisation and I'm a farmer. If I'm told, "We've got our own dock, this is a great opportunity", when you're fed that kind of information, you have no reason to question anything. Now, in hindsight, looking back at it, I totally understand why they were so angry.
21:10 Speaker 05 But as long as Glen doesn't look through the fence, he is having a great time.
21:16 Speaker 04 I remember the first few times of getting up into the Portana Crane. It was kind of fun at the time because it was like, "Wow, this is a 300-tonne piece of machinery that I'm sitting here operating. It's like, this is better than me to little Fergie 135 back at home.
21:32 Speaker 05 Now, this Plan B, the collaboration between Patrick's and the NFF, we've been calling it Corrigan's Plan because that's what he told us.
21:40 Speaker 20 I obviously had to come up with a Plan B. And if I could get someone independent of our business and lease them that facility, they could continue the training and actually do some shipping work at WebDoc. And so I looked then for an organisation and I found the Australian Farmers' Federation. We're very enthusiastic about the chance of change and they decided they'd take on a role.
22:09 Speaker 05 But when we went digging in the archives, Corrigan was saying something very different at the time.
22:15 Speaker 20 They approached us, is my recollection of it.
22:18 Speaker 05 Back then, Corrigan was saying the NFF approached him. And the NFF? Well, its president, Don McGekey, isn't too sure. Journalist David Hardaker is trying to get to the bottom of it.
22:32 Speaker 21 Mr McGekey says, "It might have been you, he can't quite remember. Might it have been you who approached the NFF?"
22:38 Speaker 20 No, I wouldn't frankly have known who to approach.
22:42 Speaker 05 This makes us wonder, just whose idea was PCS? Did the NFF approach Chris Corrigan to lease WebDoc? Or was it the other way around? So, we're getting some conflicting information as to who approached who first. Geraldine, why is it so important to know whether it was the Farmers' or Patrick's who came up with the idea of Farmers leasing WebDoc for training?
23:09 Speaker 13 Yeah, so who asked who out first? It's a really big question here and it goes to the heart of whether PCS was a legitimate stevedoring operation or if they were just being trained to take the place of Patrick's workers. So at the time, PCS was marketing themselves, billing themselves as a legitimate alternative workforce who were setting up in competition with Patrick's. But they just happened to come along at the exact same time that Patrick's needed a replacement workforce. So if Patrick's asked them out first, that means their purpose was to replace the MUA. If they asked Patrick's out, if they approached Chris Corrigan about setting up their alternative
23:54 Speaker 13 stevedoring operation, maybe that's a little bit of a different situation.
23:59 Speaker 05 Huh. Something's a little fishy with Corrigan's Plan B. But let's let that one percolate, shall we? Because there is a slightly more pressing issue at hand. Corrigan's Plan A. Remember the workers from that plan? The ex-military guys who went to Dubai? Well, after sitting around, not doing much, and feeling frustrated, some end up in the mix with the PCS recruits, some as their trainers. But the pair who recruited them, the ex-SAS guys, Mike Wells and Peter Kilfoyle, well, they're watching this new training exercise at Webdoc and they are fuming. Corrigan still owes them and their workers money.
24:43 Speaker 05 At this point, Corrigan's still publicly denying any involvement in Dubai. But Wells and Kilfoyle are fed up. They're ready to out him and maybe recoup a few bucks while they're at it. They've got a heap of documents that link Corrigan to Dubai. All the contracts for their workers. And they reckon the union might be interested in them. So they set up a meeting with John Coombs from the MUA at the Prince of Wales Hotel in St Kilda. Think grungy 90s rock vibe. Here's Peter Kilfoyle.
25:17 Speaker 19 I wasn't happy with the hotel because I looked at all the entries and exits and thought, oh my god, this is not a good place.
25:25 Speaker 05 Spoken like a true ex-SAS man. The meeting goes ahead, but the union's not buying any of their documents. Kilfoyle and Wells are asking way too much for them. They don't give up, though. A few weeks later, they organise another meeting. This time at a place called The Kelvin Club, with more manageable entries and exits. Greg Conbe from the ACTU is at that meeting.
25:52 Speaker 08 Very old, worn-out, 50s armchairs and old lamps. Sort of smell of stale beer a bit to it. I remember one young woman came to get us drinks in a very skimpy skirt and a very busty outfit. It was very old fashioned, let's say.
26:16 Speaker 05 But the union's still not interested. So Wells and Kilfoyle try a third time at the more respectable Novatel.
26:25 Speaker 08 There, one of Kilfoyle's offside has had a briefcase sitting on his lap and he opened it and made out that he had a gun inside just to let us know that they were heavies, you know. But honestly, those meetings were kind of a circus. I thought they were funny. By this time, they asked us for $100,000 each. So for 76 people, this was not going to happen.
26:53 Speaker 05 So Wells and Kilfoyle don't recoup any of the wages they owe their workers. But they do make a pact with John Coombs from the MUA on one thing. Coombs promises his members won't hassle the families of the Dubai workers. Now, remember, all their home addresses were leaked to the union at the Etamoga pub by the Dubai Deep Throat Friend Number Two, who ended up a trainee in Dubai and just kept leaking information. Well, have a guess where Friend Number Two is now.
27:25 Speaker 05 Yep, working for PCS, still leaking all sorts of crazy intel to John Coombs. One day, union organizer Mick O'Leary is at home in Sydney with his family when Coombs rings him to say, "Get down to Melbourne, stat."
27:42 Speaker 11 He said, "We've got information that they've secured riot gear from the Lara prison and it's all in a green fair lane in Williamstown. You've got to find it."
27:59 Speaker 05 Okay, random. Mick drives around Williamstown, looking for the car.
28:07 Speaker 11 Eventually, we nailed it down to a block of flats in Williamstown. And we looked at it and there was all this riot gear and shields, batons, the whole lot.
28:18 Speaker 05 He gets out of his car and walks over to the fair lane. He hasn't seen the guy sitting in the driver's seat yet, but he does.
28:28 Speaker 11 The bikes put the barrel of the handgun to my head. Like, "Fuck off you." I said, "Mate, I'm going." I don't know whether it was loaded or whatever. So he's got in the car and he's just barreled it.
28:44 Speaker 05 And guess whose idea the shields were? Peter Kilfoyle, ex-SAS who recruited the Dubai guys.
28:54 Speaker 19 Why did I get the shields in? Because when the idiots took over Web Dog, how are you going to get people off? How are you going to evacuate people with shit as a pan? You've got no choppers. You can't land choppers in crowds. So I came up with the idea of the shield. Grab a shield and put a barrier up. Keep people back. Well, we got people out.
29:12 Speaker 05 The union is outraged that prison riot gear might be used against them on the picket. Things are getting even messier for Corrigan. The media is still all over him. They won't let go of Dubai. ABC journalist, the late Matt Peacock, still suspects Corrigan's behind Dubai. Last time he challenged him, Corrigan flat out denied it. But this time...
29:37 Speaker 22 Mr. Corrigan, a few months ago on this programme, you told me you had no knowledge of the Dubai operation. That was a lie, wasn't it?
29:45 Speaker 23 Well, we had some commercial interests to protect. And to some extent, I think we have a right to go about protecting our commercial interests if there isn't an overwhelming public interest to know.
29:55 Speaker 05 Finally, Corrigan's cracked. Sort of. He admits to a minor involvement in Dubai. Says he leased some equipment to Wells and Kilfoyle.
30:06 Speaker 22 You say it's a desperate act of a desperate man.
30:10 Speaker 23 That's right.
30:11 Speaker 22 How desperate are you?
30:12 Speaker 23 Well, we're desperate to make a profit.
30:14 Speaker 05 The MUA is hearing this admission from Corrigan and wondering how they can get him to admit to more. So they go on the front foot. They plan to get Chris Corrigan in the witness stand to grill him about Dubai. Surely, he won't lie under oath. Now, this part's a little convoluted. But what you need to know is that the union finds a way to make Chris Corrigan appear before the Industrial Relations Commission. And it's there that he admits to even more involvement.
30:45 Speaker 24 Corrigan told more of his role. He said he'd met Wells and Kilfoyle twice in November last year, in the weeks before they took off to Dubai. They'd discussed financial arrangements for equipment and the recruiting of soldiers. Corrigan though maintained that neither he, nor his companies, Patrick's and Lang Corporation, had any financial obligation over the recruitment of the Dubai men.
31:11 Speaker 05 Now, the MUA knows that this is not true. It suspects that not only is Corrigan behind Dubai, but that Dubai is a means to an end. But how to get Corrigan to admit what his end goal really is?
31:28 Speaker 05 Well, I guess the lawyers could try asking him. So they do. Point blank, ask him if he's ever discussed dismissing the entire union workforce with anyone. And what do you know? Corrigan answers, yes. And who has he discussed this with? A government adviser, he says. Can't quite remember who though.
31:54 Speaker 05 The courtroom gasps, because this confirms what the unions long suspected, that not only is mass dismissal on the cards, but that someone in the government is aware of it.
32:08 Speaker 08 We're trying to piece together just how Chris Corrigan would lawfully be able to terminate the entire workforce. I couldn't figure out how they could do it lawfully.
32:21 Speaker 05 On the other side of town, a young lawyer is also trying to work that out.
32:25 Speaker 25 I knew something was brewing that was big, and I couldn't see what the union was doing to respond, and I couldn't understand what their strategy was.
32:34 Speaker 05 In frustration, he picks up the phone and calls Greg Comby.
32:38 Speaker 25 I said, hi Greg, you don't know me, I'm Josh Bornstein. I want to come and talk to you about your strategy in dealing with what's going on in the waterfront, and he said, what strategy?
32:51 Speaker 05 Bornstein meets with Comby, and he takes along barrister Herman Borenstein.
32:56 Speaker 08 They came and said, we've got some thoughts. And I was very happy to hear thoughts, I was quite stressed. And Herman had had this idea that...
33:06 Speaker 08 What was taking place was an unlawful conspiracy.
33:10 Speaker 05 An unlawful conspiracy. That's when two groups, in this case Patrick's and the NFF, work together, conspire, if you will, to hurt a third party, that being the members of the MUA. And the way to hurt them? Sack the entire Patrick's workforce. Everything's pointing in that direction. But sacking 1,400 people in one day? That sounds a little extreme. Until a whistleblower emerges.
33:41 Speaker 26 Jamie Meek signed up as a trainee wharfie on the NFF's web doc site in Melbourne two weeks ago. He's now jumped ship and says the NFF-backed PNC Stevedores is planning a military-style operation to replace Patrick Stevedor's workforce on wharves around the country.
33:57 Speaker 05 Did he just say military-style operation? That sounds even more extreme. Except, this guy's got a date for it.
34:06 Speaker 27 Well, we heard from management and instructors that over the Easter period, the wharffies will down tone for the holidays. And that's when the strikebreakers are going to move in and take over Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.
34:21 Speaker 05 And just as Jamie Meek predicts, quietly, in the days before Easter, PCS workers are sent home to wait for...
34:31 Speaker 04 A projected date in the future where we want to push the big red button, so to speak, and say, right, we're ready to go now, this business is ready to go.
34:43 Speaker 05 Next time on Conspiracy. When will Corrigan push that big red button? And how?
34:51 Speaker 18 He just said, Cole, it's on.
34:53 Speaker 09 They moved in with dogs and balaclavas.
34:56 Speaker 18 It's a miracle someone didn't get killed.
35:00 Speaker 05 Conspiracy: War on the Waterfront is an ABC Rewind production. I'm Jan Fran. Catch you next time.
35:30 Speaker 28 You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.
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