A criminal case against two unionists facing major charges has collapsed spectacularly after the evidence of building industry watchdog inspectors was called into question.
Magistrate William O'Day said there had been ''significant conflicts in some of the evidence the court has heard'' as prosecutors yesterday agreed to drop 13 of the 15 charges against John Setka and Matt Hudson over an incident on a Carlton building site in 2009.
Instead Setka and Hudson agreed to each plead guilty to a minor charge of behaving in an offensive manner in a public place.
Setka is the assistant state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMU) while Hudson is no longer with the union but was a senior official at the time. Both men faced a range of serious assault-related charges that could have resulted in jail if they were convicted.
But prosecutors agreed to drop most of the charges after 2½ days of the committal hearing.
Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) inspector Mathew Keene admitted during the hearing that he destroyed his original notes from the incident and that he had not kept sunglasses that he had claimed had been forcefully removed from his head.
Defence lawyer Rob Stary said the ''manipulation of evidence, the destruction of evidence'' when even put in its most charitable light was ''disturbing''. He said the case highlighted the need for an inquiry into the ABCC, which he said had ''no role in the industry''.
He said police should not have been put in the position where ''industrial disputes are criminalised''.
CFMEU state secretary Bill Oliver said the watchdog had been ''revealed to be running a vendetta against Mr Setka'' but were unable to ''deploy it with any sort of competency''.
The timing and result of the case was embarrassing for the ABCC with Parliament this week debating a move by the Gillard government to abolish it and replace it with a new regulator with reduced powers.
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