‘You’re a woman, get me a glass of water’: What CFMEU boss said at BPIC meeting

A former senior government executive believed her school-aged children were being stalked by CFMEU members and was subjected to expletive name-calling before she resigned, the Queensland inquiry into the union has heard.

Amanda Yeates, formerly the deputy director-general of the Department of Transport and Main Roads, was emotional as she told the inquiry about her dealings with the union’s former leaders Jade Ingham and Michael Ravbar between 2020 and 2022.

Though she had worked for the department for over a decade, she had only begun meeting with the pair to discuss the implementation of the union-friendly workplace entitlement conditions, dubbed Best Practice Industry Conditions (BPIC).

She recalled Ingham and Ravbar arrived to their first face-to-face meeting in 2020 “quite agitated”, and at one point, Ravbar turned to her and said: “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,” Yeates said in evidence to the Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU and Misconduct in the Construction Industry on Thursday.

Then Labor transport minister Mark Bailey was in attendance, she told the inquiry, and said Ravbar told him point-blank: “You are a f---ing shit minister.”

Tensions escalated over subsequent months, with Yeates describing bullying and abusive behaviour by CFMEU officials, especially towards the department’s former director-general Neil Scales.

The tirades continued even after a decision was made to remove Scales from union meetings, she said.

“At various times, he [Ingham] would call us incompetent, lazy fat cats. The worst escalation was when he called us c---s.”

Yeates said the expletive was directed at her at least four times on two separate occasions, and she walked out of a meeting with Transport and Main Roads chief procurement officer Deanne Hawkswood in protest.

“I have never been spoken to or sworn at in the way that Mr Ingham and Mr Ravbar did,” she said.

Yeates told the commission she reported the behaviour to Scales and Bailey’s office but decided not to lodge a formal complaint out of fear of retribution.

She ultimately resigned in 2022 after Ingham, who had started bringing different, unnamed men to meetings, began to make comments about her children amounting to stalking.

Yeates said she believed leaving the department was the only way to stop the union’s threatening behaviour.