Interview with Jaynie Seal, Sky News Australia

Event: Interview with Jaynie Seal, Sky News Australia

Date: 22 March 2026, 12.40pm AEDT
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: CFMEU

E&OE

Jaynie Seal, Sky News Australia host: It’s been revealed the CFMEU enlisted a former bikie to assist in Victoria Labor’s 2022 campaign. A photo has emerged of ex bikie and CFMEU delegate Johnny ‘Two Guns’ Walker, this is from the Herald Sun today, handing out how to vote cards, according to the Sun Herald. Mr Walker was seen campaigning for then Labor Candidate Luba Grigorovitch, who later won the seat of Kororoit in Melbourne’s west with more joining us live is Master Builders Australia’s Chief Executive, Denita Wawn. Thank you so much for joining us Denita. Now I believe he was on parole and had an ankle monitoring bracelet at the time, and the Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has faced intense criticism for refusing to hold a royal inquiry into building sector corruption. What do you want to hear from the Victorian Government?

Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: I think this is, yet again, a reflection of the concerns that we have been saying for decades around the problems with the culture and the business model of the CFMEU across the country, including the CFMEU Victoria. We’ve now seen it in Administration for 18 months. Things are calmer, but there is significant concern in the industry that if we don’t do more than just Administration, we will have a ‘Back to the Future’ moment. It’s been 40 years since we saw the deregulation of the Builders Labourers Federation, we’ve now got the CFMEU into Administration. Our plea to the Federal Government, as well as state and territory governments is, don’t let the Administration be the only step. It should be the first step in ensuring we have appropriate guardrails to ensure the propriety of activity by the CFMEU, any other building and construction union, and the industry more broadly itself.

Host: All right and so Master Builders Australia has the six-point plan to fix the construction industry. Talk us through that. We’ll bring up on screen some of the points here.

Denita: Yes, from Master Builders’ perspective, as I said, Administration of the CFMEU should only be the first step. We’re advocating, from a Federal Government point of view, that there is more to be done. This relates to ensuring that we have a fit and proper person test, that we have witness protections, not only for individuals, but for their businesses and their families. That we’re ensuring that we have productive enterprise agreements. At the moment we’ve got significant productivity sapping provisions in those pattern agreements. We need greater probity by an overarching agency to ensure not only industrial relations laws are held to account, but also criminal laws, competition laws. Industrial relations is simply used as a lever for criminal behaviour, for anti-competitive behaviour. So, more needs to be done, and that includes a change to our competition law. We’ve been advocating this position for some time, but we are reaffirming our position now that the Administration is embedded.

Host: All right. Denita, well, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you coming in and presenting those plans as well.

Media contact: Dylan Hafey, Media Advisor

0497 330 064 |  dylan.hafey@masterbuilders.com.au