Last Wednesday morning, an ambitious young reporter at The Age, Paul Sakkal, sent an email that would drag his employer into court, trigger a personal confrontation with Premier Daniel Andrews, and raise a question that would be far-fetched in any other state: has its leader become so powerful that even Melbourne’s grand, old paper is unable to hold him to account?
Sakkal had information about one of the most sensitive documents in Victoria – a preliminary report of a corruption investigation into a $3.4 million grant to a union in 2018 issued against public service advice.
An earlier version of this online story included some detail that was not relevant or necessary. Those details have since been deleted.