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February 11, 2026 — 11:58am
Former workplace minister Murray Watt says it would be “ridiculous” to sack the official the Albanese government appointed to administer the CFMEU, as he rejected the opposition’s call to sack Mark Irving KC for redacting chapters critical of Labor from a report into union corruption.
This masthead revealed on Wednesday that Irving removed sections of a landmark report into union corruption. The report found union corruption added $15 billion in cost blowouts to Victoria’s Big Build infrastructure program, and that the Victorian Labor government ignored CFMEU graft and organised crime links on infrastructure projects.
Irving was appointed in August 2024 to administer the CFMEU by the Albanese government after this masthead exposed widespread graft and corruption in the union involving bikies, organised crime and intimidation.
Previously, the union had appointed lawyer Geoffrey Watson SC in July 2024 to investigate the claims.
The report, completed in December 2024, was requested by a Queensland Commission of Inquiry into the union, and Irving sent a version that removed the sections that contained findings that Victoria’s Labor government turned a blind eye to CFMEU corruption.
Irving said he deleted chapters from the report because he could not verify the accuracy of some information.
Opposition industrial relations spokesperson Tim Wilson on Tuesday morning demanded the Watson report be released to the public, called for Irving to be removed and accused the government of attempts to bury the issue.
“The administrator should resign and if he won’t, the minister must sack him,” Wilson said. “They constantly shut down question time, shut down inquiries, and shut down questions that would have identified and gone to the heart of the CFMEU Labor cartel of corruption.”
After Workplace Minister Amanda Rishworth was contacted for comment, the government released a statement backing Irving.
“The handling, distribution and publication of reports commissioned by the independent Administrator is a matter for him. We retain full confidence in the administrator,” a government spokesperson said.
Watson’s report said a 15 per cent cost was a conservative estimate of the impact of corruption on the public purse.
“From there the maths is simple – the leadership of the CFMEU has cost the Victorian taxpayer something like $15 billion,” Wilson said.
“When $15 billion of taxpayers’ money is washed through a system and some of it ends up in the pockets of the Labor Party itself, there is something much deeper and much more important to rebuild public trust.”
Watt, who represented Rishworth in a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday morning, said it was Irving’s responsibility to decide what parts of the report were released, not the government’s.
“[Irving] made a judgment that there were aspects of that report that were not well-founded. It’s his call about what gets released,” Watt said.
“It is the administrator’s [Irving’s] stated reason for redacting those sections was that he believed they weren’t well-founded, not that he didn’t like them. I cannot overstate the confidence that this government has in the administrator.”
Under Irving’s administration, the CFMEU has sacked dozens of officials and exposed several cases of serious corruption.
Watt said it was “ridiculous” for the opposition to call for Irving’s dismissal.
Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic said Irving attempted an “industrial-scale cover-up” of corruption when he handed an edited version of the Watson report to the Queensland government’s iniquity.
“We need to get the answers today because this has created, in effect, a criminal cartel tax on Australia’s housing industry. Everyday Australians are paying more for construction and young Australians are paying more for their first homes because of this cover-up and this conduct.”
Kovacic will seek answers in Senate estimates hearings about the government’s handling of the CFMEU corruption scandal, which she said had imposed the costs of graft onto new homebuyers.
Deputy secretary of the workplace relations department, Greg Manning, said his department had received a truncated version of the report on January 27. However, in response to questions from Kovacic, Manning said he had seen the material that had been removed.
“There were chapters that went to estimates of costs of corruption in the building sector and that went to knowledge of the corruption in the building sector.”
Kovacic asked if the sections that were removed from the report contained information about Victorian MPs.
More to come
