When Indigenous Melbourne man Ben Nash left for work on the morning of January 24, a day before his 19th birthday, all his mother, Tammie, knew was that her son was heading to a job he loved.
“He was drawn to civil construction,” she says of Ben, a proud Gunditjmara man and devoted player at the North Ringwood Football Club.
She says he’d overcome mental health issues to throw himself into footy and his dream of building a career in construction. An Indigenous construction firm, Marda Dandhi, had not only offered Ben a job, but gave him what Tammie described as a chance to “just embrace his Indigenous heritage”.
“Ben loved it. He couldn’t have loved it any more.”
But ever since he skipped out the door that January morning, Tammie’s days have been marked with discoveries about all that she didn’t know and would yet find out.
Construction was Ben Nash’s dream career.
She didn’t know that the construction industry her son was entering was infested with underworld figures and cronyism, fuelled by crooked businesses and certain CFMEU officials who have formed an unholy alliance to control who works, and who doesn’t, on major projects.
The fiery mother of two was unaware that the Indigenous company which had given her son his first start, Marda Dandhi – run by proud Mandandanji man Danny Miller – had been targeted by the CFMEU, or that a union organiser had, many months earlier, threatened to bash Miller along with another of Ben’s bosses, labelling the pair “dogs”.
Tammie had no idea that a second senior union official had warned her son’s bosses that, without CFMEU backing, they would never access any sites funded by the Labor government. Neither of those men had direct contact with Ben.
She also wasn’t expecting Ben to arrive home early from work distraught that same January day, telling her he’d been bullied and humiliated on a building site because the CFMEU was angry he’d previously been employed by Marda Dandhi.
Tammie didn’t know that the next morning, when she was meant to be making him a birthday brekkie, she would instead find him in his bed, his lips blue and skin cold, having taken a fatal overdose of his mental health and prescription medicine.
‘He was told to f— off, they locked him in a shed’
It will ultimately be up to a coroner to formally determine the cause of Ben’s death, but Tammie is demanding action against those behind the culture of fear and intimidation in the CFMEU she believes cost her son his life.
Tammie believes Ben’s treatment at work “tipped him over the edge”.
Asked who she blames for his death, Tammy utters five letters: CFMEU.
“According to Ben, he was pulled aside [by an unnamed representative] and told that nobody that worked for Marda [Dandhi] would ever be welcome on site again. He was told to f— off. He just wanted to work. He rang his employer to try and sort something out, and CFMEU wouldn’t listen to him. They didn’t offer any help. They locked him in a shed for three or four hours, just a young boy with mental health issues.”
Tammie wants things to change after her son’s death.Credit: 60 Minutes
Tammie is hardly a lone voice in calling out the culture of union-linked intimidation and questionable dealings in the building industry.
Ben’s death, and his mother’s determination to make something good of it, gives a human face – that of the ordinary suburban Australian worker – to an unfolding catalogue of construction union badness. The CFMEU denies responsibility for the death.
The story of Ben’s death comes amid a crisis engulfing the CFMEU. On Friday, construction division boss John Setka resigned after receiving detailed questions from this masthead.
On Saturday, an investigation into the CFMEU by this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed how bikies and underworld figures were thriving in the construction sector. On Sunday, it was reported how Setka had made a menacing night-time visit to the family home of a fellow union leader.
Federal and state governments have flagged they will take action against the union. On Monday, the Victorian branch was placed in administration.
Over the weekend, this masthead and 60 Minutes also published covert video of the union official threatening to bash the two owners of Ben’s company, and audio of an industry fixer – caught in a covert sting— who claimed to be able to bribe CFMEU officials in order to parachute corrupt companies onto the Victorian and federal government-funded Big Build projects and force non-preferred companies off sites.
Victoria’s state and federally funded $100 billion Big Build road and rail infrastructure program was where Ben wanted to be, says Tammie, recalling her son’s fascination with large civil projects. “On his days off work, he’d pay out of his own pocket and go and get tickets so that he could operate more machinery.”
Tammie says Ben’s last day alive stands in stark contrast to his earlier time working for Marda Dandhi, the fledgling Indigenous construction firm started by Miller.
According to Miller’s LinkedIn profile, Marda Dandhi’s vision was to place Indigenous men and women into long-term, sustainable jobs by equipping them with new skills and a sense of pride and purpose. Miller declined to be interviewed. Friends say he’s had his own mental health struggles after the firm’s collapse.
For Ben, Tammie says Marda Dandhi was a “perfect fit”.
“They were terrific. Employee welfare is really important to them. I’d be ringing him or messaging him, ‘Are you coming home for dinner?’
‘No, I’m still working, mum. Someone needs a chop out here’ or ‘a hand here’.”
In late 2023, Tammie says she first heard from Ben that the firm was struggling and would likely shut down. She says she didn’t press him on the reason for Marda Dandhi’s problems at the time, instead accepting Ben’s offer for him to fly her to Bali.
“I was lucky enough to have two trips to Bali with him, that he paid for to take his mum away, which was beautiful memories,” she says.
While she and Ben were on holidays, Marda Dandhi was winding down.
The company had faced multiple challenges, from COVID-19, pay problems and racism among some big builders.
Despite initially securing CFMEU and Australian Workers’ Union support, the former turned on them. The change in attitude is made clear in covert footage of two senior construction union officials, filmed in March 2022 on a publicly funded Big Build project.
The film records senior CFMEU Indigenous organiser Joel Shackleton repeatedly threatening to violently bash Miller, telling him he would “f—ing end you, c— and you know it, don’t f— with me. I’ll f—ing take your soul and I’ll rip your f—ing head off. Don’t f— with me, c—. F— you. You’re a f—ing dog.”
The covert video also captures a second high-ranking CFMEU official, Gerry McCrudden, warning that any firms without CFMEU backing – in the form of a CFMEU-endorsed enterprise bargaining agreement – would struggle to win work on any major civil sites due to the construction union’s control of the Labor government key tier 1 contractors.
“We’ve got them [tier 1 contractors] all,” McCrudden says.
“And youse [sic] won’t be coming in with our companies.”
It is not suggested that either man had contact with Ben or was involved in the events leading up to his death.
Neither commented when contacted last week.
‘Mum, I just need to sleep’
It was only in January, the day Ben arrived home early, utterly distraught, that Tammie learnt of the extent of acrimony between the CFMEU and Marda Dandhi.
Ben told her he had been bullied by an unnamed CFMEU representative and ordered to sit in a shed for hours because, even though he was working for a new company, he had worn a Marda Dandhi T-shirt.
“He was angry and stressed, and yeah, just not himself. He was worried. Yeah. He’d been told that he wasn’t welcome on site because of the Marda shirt that he had on.”
He told his mum he had been “belittled … yelled at, sworn at and ignored”.
“He said, ‘I feel sorry for anybody that has ever worked for Danny because anybody that has ever worked for Marda will never get a job on a CFMEU site ever again’,” Tammie says.
Ben Nash as a youngster, celebrating his birthday with mum Tammie.
Tammie believes Ben’s treatment made him fear for his future in a career he had only started.
“He was worried about his new job … He was 18 years old, first day on site. No other workers there that he knew. No support. I thought that’s what unions were supposed to do, look after their employees.”
For Tammie, what happened next is a blur.
“I asked him if he was OK … and he said, ‘Mum, I just need to sleep. I just need to sleep. I just need this to stop.’
“So, he went to bed and I checked up on him at about midnight to make sure he was OK, and he was fine.”
But when Ben didn’t walk out to the kitchen for breakfast, Tammie checked on her son again.
“He was cold. His lips were blue. He was clearly dead. His girlfriend was hysterical, obviously, we all were. And then it was just calling triple zero. He was gone. There was nothing we could do.”
Next came the “most unbelievable pain”.
“I just sat outside. The ambos came and the fireys come, police come and detectives come because Ben was so young and an unexpected death.”
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Tammie hopes the coroner will get to the bottom of her son’s death.
Tammie says CFMEU officials visited her and tried to downplay the role of workplace intimidation in Ben’s death. But Tammie isn’t buying it.
“Where was the duty of care for my son? Why was he locked in a shed for so long? Why didn’t they tell him to turn his shirt inside out?
“They didn’t want him there. They didn’t want him on site. They didn’t want him there, purely because he was wearing the Marda Dandhi shirt.
“Kids can’t go to work and end up dead the next day. No family needs to go through this.”
If you or anyone you know needs support call Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.
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