A Canberra police officer threatened to arrest a union official for trespass and breaching the peace at a Fyshwick construction site, a royal commission has heard.
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Detective Sergeant Mark Battye claimed John Lomax had attempted to intimidate him, "flashed" a card in his face, and invaded his personal space at the Beaconsfield Street site in December 2012.
But the officer admitted he knew "not much" about right of entry laws, received no official complaints from workers who were said to have been intimidated, and denied he had used his position to intimidate Mr Lomax.
It is understood the allegations do not relate to the December 2012 incident.
The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption on Tuesday heard the police had been called by builder Darrell Leemhuis, who alleged the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had disrupted work.
Detective Sergeant Battye said Lomax approached him "within my personal space" and "physically swiped [a permit] in front of my face".
"I said words to the effect if you are using the pass as a basis for being here and performing a function, I need to see that card," Detective Sergeant Battye said.
"He then handed me his permit card and I commenced to look at the card and write details of that card into my police notebook.
"Whilst doing that, he's physically grabbed the card out of my hand and tried to snatch it off me. I snatched it back from him."
Detective Sergeant Battye told the royal commission that this attempt to "intimidate police", made him concerned that Mr Lomax would do the same to workers on the building site, and issued the threat to arrest the official.
"I thought he tried to intimidate me, I didn't want him walking around the site continuing to conduct himself like that and I said to him, 'While we're here I don't want you walking around the site intimidating people. If you do that, I'll lock you up" and I pointed to a caged vehicle and I said, 'You'll be arrested'."
Under questioning by CFMEU lawyer John Agius, Detective Sergeant Battye said he had not spoken to anyone who claimed to have been threatened.
The officer also maintained Mr Lomax had encroached on his personal space, which he estimated to have been within one metre and attempted to snatch his card back.
Detective Sergeant Battye denied he had used his authority as a police officer to intimidate Mr Lomax in circumstances where he knew nothing about right of entry laws.
"If he felt that way, I'd be very surprised.
"Within a metre is pretty close. I would say most people probably interact with each other at a further distance than that."
When asked about his knowledge about the law concerning the right of entry of union officials in relation to work, health and safety matters, the officer replied: "Not much".
"There's a lot of pieces of legislation that the police need to deal with and we're not going to know all of them.
"Generally we apply commonsense approach to a lot of these things and I suspected that they would have had certain rights, but I didn't know all of the details of what they could and couldn't do at the time."
The hearing continues.
