An electoral official counts ballot papers at an Australian Electoral Commission office in Melbourne August 24, 2010.
An electoral official counts ballot papers at an Australian Electoral Commission office in Melbourne August 24, 2010. Australia faces a week of political wrangling as votes were counted on Monday from an inconclusive election, with financial markets rowing back on early expectations of a minority conservative government. Reuters/Mick Tsikas

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) state secretary Michael Ravbar was presented to the royal commission to give evidence in the corruption inquiry hearing in Brisbane on Thursday.

Ravbar had been accused of partnering with former CFMEU President Dave Hanna in hiding the documents related to the latter’s crime. Hanna was allegedly involved in benefitting from free work worth tens of thousands of dollars on the house at south Brisbane that he had built for his family in 2013.

The royal commission published an interim report in December 2014 against the state secretary under the Queensland Criminal Code, recommending extortion charges. The commission also forwarded its recommendation to the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions soon after the publication of the report, the ABC reported.

A Queensland DPP spokesperson refused to comment on the matter. “The independent DPP has not discussed or corresponded about this matter with any member of the Government,” he told the ABC .

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told parliament last week that disciplinary action had been taken by the Labor Party against Hanna, resulting in his immediate resignation. She said on Wednesday that the allegations of the commission are shocking and she will wait for the final verdict before taking any further action.

In April 2014, the commission served CFMEU with a notice for the production of the documents related to the corruption in which Hanna was involved. In the hearing on Tuesday, Hanna told the commission that it was Ravbar who had given instruction to the staff to cover up the security cameras before removing the documents from CFMEU Brisbane offices.

On the other hand, CFMEU office manager Paula Masters, in the hearing on Wednesday, told the commission that removal and destruction of documents was not Ravbar's, but Hanna’s own decision.

On Wednesday, one of the CFMEU staff members said that Hanna told him to cover up the cameras. In addition, the recommendation of extortion charges against Ravbar’s reported efforts to remove some contractors from worksites will only be valid if they have financially aided the union directly or indirectly.

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