'Stalked my kids': ex-public servant's teary claims

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 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 on Thursday through tears.

"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.

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.

Ms Yeates said that in one meeting at the CFMEU's Bowen Hills office she was called the vile slur at least four times.