Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, December 4, 1997
By MICHAEL MILLETT, Chief Political Correspondent
The Federal Government was involved in a scheme by two ex-Army officers to train former military personnel to act as "industrial mercenaries" in an extended industrial confrontation on the waterfront, the Opposition claimed yesterday.
But the Government denied any knowledge of the plan, insisting it had no intention of using former or current military employees as part of its strategy to break union control of the Australian docks.
The waterfront reform issue erupted in Parliament yesterday after the Opposition revealed that a Melbourne company had used an official Army magazine to recruit military personnel for training overseas as stevedoring workers.
The first group of 30 recruits, employed under local individual contracts on salaries of up to $60,000 a year, flew out of Melbourne last night for Dubai. They will begin three months' intensive training at the Government-owned port.
The Opposition's transport spokesman, Mr Lindsay Tanner, said documents obtained by him showed the men were recruited through a web of companies linked to a former Army captain, Mr Michael Wells, and a former SAS officer, Mr Peter Kilfoyle.
Mr Wells ran an organisation called Multi Placement Recruiting and Consulting, which offered counter-terrorist and weapons training, while Mr Kilfoyle, who was employed by Mr Wells, was skilled in electronic surveillance and unarmed combat techniques.
"These men are industrial mercenaries who have recruited through the Australian defence forces and they will be trained in a variety of stevedoring activities to be deployed as ... a scab labour on the waterfront," Mr Tannner said.
"Is this the Government's approach to industrial relations? Bring in the heavies, bring in the spies and the miliary types to boot the crap out of the people on the waterfront?"
The Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr Reith, said he had no knowledge of the affair until it was raised in Parliament yesterday.
"My view is if people are acting within the law they are entitled to go about their commercial business," he said.
Mr Wells, who had organised a briefing for his recruits at Tullamarine's Travelodge Hotel before he flew out with them last night, denied his company, Fynwest Pty Ltd, was involved in any strikebreaking strategy.
He said he had been contracted by an overseas consortium to recruit technical people to be "deployed in the Asia-Pacific basin" to train other people in stevedoring work.
"We have no association with the Federal Government. I have not spoken to anyone from the Government or any of the shipping companies," he told ABC Radio.
But Mr Tanner said an advertisement placed in the Army magazine by Mr Wells called for "trade specialists" to be employed in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - the four main container ports in Australia.
A confidential copy of the contract details for the Dubai trainees also requires that they return to Australia in March to train another 120 to 180 personnel.
This would entail them being "locked in" a camp in an undisclosed destination, sleeping on stretcher beds in a hangar-type building, with the aim of not drawing the attention of locals.
