The high court has dismissed an appeal from the competition watchdog which argued a builder and the construction union had colluded to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. The case concerned the decision of Hutchinson builders to end a contract with a waterproofer on a Brisbane project in 2016.
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00:00Hutchinson engaged Waterproofing Industries as a subcontractor on the South Point project
00:07in Brisbane in March 2016.
00:10It did some work on the project before the CFMEU threatened to take industrial action.
00:16It was unhappy that it hadn't been consulted beforehand and that WPI didn't have its own
00:21enterprise agreement with the union.
00:24WPI's contract was terminated about six weeks later.
00:28The ACCC had argued the builder and the union reached a meeting of minds about the decision
00:33to end the contract, which amounted to a breach of competition law.
00:37But in a 4-1 split decision, the High Court has rejected that argument.
00:41It found merely capitulating to a union threat is not enough to prove there was a shared
00:46understanding and there had to be more evidence of communication between the pair.
00:51The decision means fines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars initially handed to both
00:56the builder and the union won't have to be paid.
00:59The ACCC has been ordered to pay the other parties' costs.