The union boss greenlighted by the Victorian Labor government to wield huge control over the Big Build vouched in court for a major drug trafficker on two separate occasions before installing him at the helm of a major Big Build firm – only for the criminal to be busted and jailed again.
The support provided by the CFMEU’s now former boss on the Big Build, Joe Myles, to criminal Wayne “Junior” Carter has emerged as a case study of how criminals infiltrated Labor’s signature infrastructure scheme.
Queensland court records uncovered by this masthead reveal that on two occasions, in 2012 and then again in 2020, Myles provided court character references for Carter as the prolific drug trafficker prepared to be jailed for serious crimes, including an eight-year sentence for trafficking dangerous drugs.
By the time of his 2020 reference for Carter, Myles was becoming the most influential CFMEU official on the Big Build because the Labor government had – according to confidential government files published by this masthead on Saturday – directed major contractors to agree to union demands.
A court transcript of Carter’s plea for leniency to a Queensland Supreme Court judge in June 2020, reveals Myles promising to “provide significant support to Mr Carter” once he was released from prison in Brisbane.
The court was told Myles’ support would ensure that when Carter moved to Melbourne, he would not be on his own.
Multiple construction industry sources, speaking anonymously due to the fear of repercussions, have confirmed that upon Carter’s release from prison in Queensland, Myles instructed a newly booming labour hire firm, Women in Construction, to install Carter as its manager, a role he held in 2022 and 2023.
At the same time, Myles also directed Big Build contractors to hire Women in Construction, which was founded in 2019 by another man with criminal convictions, Luke Ellery.
Carter’s time at Women in Construction was controversial. Three Big Build workers who dealt with him said he mistreated women, despite his company’s ostensible mission being to supply female workers to the Big Build.
Corruption investigator Geoffrey Watson said that when he did his landmark investigation into the CFMEU last year, he was told by informants that Carter was “obtaining sexual services from [some] women so that they could get these very lucrative jobs. It was really awful”.
In his report on the CFMEU tabled in the Queensland royal commission, Watson described Myles as playing a leading role in the infiltration of major infrastructure projects with bikies and having links to underworld figure Mick Gatto.
Confidential files sent to the state government in 2023 by Big Build contractors reveal that Labor was warned in writing that Women in Construction had been forced onto sites by the CFMEU and was charging rates up to 25 per cent higher than competitors.
The files also show the state government did nothing to stop the spread of Women in Construction across the Big Build for years, with the firm’s labour hire licence being ripped up only last week after this masthead revealed the company’s criminal links.
Court records from Victoria reveal that in around late 2023, while Carter was working in Women in Construction, he was targeted and eventually charged with fresh drug offending by the Victoria Police clandestine drug laboratory squad. The records also show Carter was recently jailed for violence against a woman.
Carter left Women in Construction in late 2023, starting his own company called “The Real Women in Construction”.
On Sunday, this masthead and 60 Minutes also revealed that after Carter left the company, Women in Construction began paying Gatto. It paid him more than $700,000 and was one of multiple Big Build labour hire firms still paying the underworld identity in 2026.
On Sunday, Myles’ wife Elizabeth Doidge, who was previously the CFMEU’s state government liaison, issued a statement claiming the couple were the targets of a political campaign that “distracts attention from those who warrant genuine scrutiny”.
“We have always conducted ourselves with integrity. We have never had the authority to issue instructions regarding employers’ actions. At no time have we acted contrary to the interests of union members or used our positions for personal benefit,” they said.
They said the CFMEU administrator possessed documents and information that contradicted the allegations made against the pair.
Myles knew Carter while the pair worked together at the construction union in Queensland prior to Myles’ moving to the CFMEU in Victoria in 2014.
By then, Carter’s exploitation of his position as a union organiser to engage in drug trafficking was detailed in extensive media reporting. Despite this, Myles provided his second character reference for Carter in May 2020.
The head of the Queensland taskforce that arrested Carter in 2010, now retired senior officer Lance Vercoe, said his inquiry had uncovered that Carter exploited the construction union’s Queensland arm to engage in criminal activity, including giving an Albanian drug trafficker a job as a union official.
“Even after Wayne Carter’s been released from jail, he’s been welcomed back into the CFMEU family, and sent down to Melbourne,” Vercoe said.
Carter’s plan to move to Melbourne was aired in the Supreme Court in Brisbane when he was sentenced to prison again for drug offences in 2020.
The interstate move, his lawyer said at the time, would help rid Carter of the “negative influences” in south-east Queensland.
In Melbourne, he would instead have a significant support network, including Myles, the lawyer said.
But the court heard Carter’s 2020 offending came against a backdrop of an already extensive criminal history, linked to Albanian drug kingpin Daniel Kalaja.
About a decade earlier, Carter had been snared and jailed for eight years as part of Operation Warrior, a covert investigation-led takedown of a multimillion-dollar drug trafficking operation spanning the east coast from northern Queensland to Victoria.
Vercoe, a detective inspector on Operation Warrior under the Crime and Misconduct Commission, told this masthead that suggestions the trade unions at the time had no idea Carter was selling drugs was comical.
He said the fact unions had said they were not aware was treating the public like idiots.
“Kalaja and Carter were obviously mates,” Vercoe recalled. “When Kalaja got taken in and he became aware that there was suspicion in terms of how he was living his lifestyle and the cash available to him, Wayne Carter secured him a job with the BLF [union] as a workplace health and safety officer at the Gold Coast University Hospital.
“That in itself is the level of corruption that was involved in that because Wayne Carter’s obviously a member of the BLF, which was associated with the CFMEU at the time.
“For him to be able to employ a person without any skill-set at all into a position of workplace health and safety officer is just comical. They were very close mates.”
Vercoe said Operation Warrior kicked off around 2009, investigating how Kalaja was supplying Carter, who was then using his younger brother to distribute drugs.
Unlike many covert operations, Warrior did not have anyone on the inside. Vercoe said police instead used listening devices in Kalaja’s home, and in a handful of others, to monitor the movements of the large-scale drug operation. Kalaja’s Gold Coast apartment was central to the investigation.
“Everybody who was anybody turned up there in terms of his network and they were quite comfortable talking in that environment. With the listening devices we knew exactly what was going on,” Vercoe said.
When investigators were aware that Kalaja had money – sometimes $150,000 worth – he owed to his Melbourne connections, police narrowed in to identify the supplier for a tactical takeout.
The supplier eventually made an appearance at Kalaja’s Gold Coast apartment, Vercoe remembered.
“It was Warren Shea who turned up to Daniel’s place,” he said. “Daniel was very sloppy in terms of hiding what he was doing. Once you knew what he was up to you could track him fairly easily. Whereas Warren Shea, when he turned up, he wouldn’t walk inside the unit, they left the unit and they went to a coffee shop and had a discussion.
“We knew, or had really good suspicions, that he was the source of the methamphetamine, we knew that it wasn’t coming from overseas, we knew it was being locally produced.”
Victorian police were passed on intelligence to chase Shea, who was another serious drug trafficker based in Melbourne, who has also worked on the Big Build for another labour hire company.
Vercoe said Kalaja got his drugs from Melbourne and supplied them to Carter, who distributed them to people on various work sites through his union role.
At the same time investigators were also receiving intelligence coming through about outlaw motorcycle gangs infiltrating the unions to create standover situations, Vercoe said.
“Wayne Carter, his employment with the BLF and his association with the CFMEU – it’s comical to suggest they weren’t aware of his criminal history,” he said.
“There were people internally who were working with the BLF who were driving him around the place and were openly telling senior management that basically he was a drug trafficker, he didn’t do any work, he just sold drugs during the court of that, including on site.
“That was something that was concerning. Were these tradies using on site or using after work?”
In sentencing Carter in 2020 for drug possession, a judge acknowledged that he appeared to be intelligent and articulate.
Vercoe said Carter was also quite charming, owing to his position in the BLF. Carter struggled with drug addiction for years amid failed rehabilitation attempts.
His lawyer in 2012 told the court Carter’s life had spiralled when his partner said she was leaving, and he “formed such an addiction he couldn’t stop”.
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‘Don’t pay Gatto, don’t get access’: Companies with gangland figure on payroll
Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
Cloe Read is the crime and court reporter at Brisbane Times.Connect via X or email.
Lachlan Abbott is a crime reporter at The Age. He was previously a city reporter and covered breaking news.Connect via email.
