Judge calls for calm in bitter battle between demolition firm and multinational contractor.
A former boxer and demolition contractor, David Ballard, has alleged that the construction giant Multiplex, now Brookfield Multiplex, and one of the most powerful unions in Australia, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, conspired to put him out of business.
The allegations form part of a court case that has become so bitter that the presiding judge has been forced to call for calm on several occasions. Almost every day there have been allegations of witnesses too fearful to go home, too nervous to swear affidavits. Anyone brave enough to give evidence can expect the barristers to trawl through their financial, medical and employment history in the most excruciating detail.
“I am not leaving this earth until this is solved,” Ballard told the Sydney Morning Herald this week. ”I got my life ruined once and I have had unbelievable things written about me that I am a standover man,” he said.
If Ballard loses this case he stands to lose everything again. His friend of 30 years, Roy Thompson, a reclusive Sunshine Coast developer and breeder of some of the finest horses in the land, has lent him money to run the case, secured by a mortgage against the Ballard family farm near Mudgee. If the defendants lose, the damages are likely to run to millions, which would deal a serious blow to the union, less so to Multiplex. But more importantly, the case is likely to spark renewed debate about practices in the building industry and further afield in the booming mining industry, where the CFMEU has coverage.
Read the full story here.
