In spruiking Operation Hawk, the premier made a goose of the government

“What we saw last night, with further revelations and information, was again shocking and completely unacceptable, which is why this morning I met with the acting Chief Commissioner of Police, and it is why I support the actions that the Victoria Police are taking to immediately establish Operation Hawk.” Jacinta Allan, March 17.

Upon first reading, this sounds like a good response from a state premier to fresh allegations of corruption at government-funded construction sites.

It acknowledges the problem. It expresses dismay and outrage. It signals an urgency and determination to fix things. It speaks to a responsive police command willing to quickly stand up a new operation to investigate and charge the crooks responsible.

If only all of this was true.

Jacinta Allan didn’t meet with acting Chief Commissioner of Police Rick Nugent the morning after this masthead and 60 Minutes released its most recent expose on the persisting influence of organised crime at Big Build sites. Not in the way you might imagine, based upon her statement.

They spoke over a Teams call as the premier and Minister for Industrial Relations Jaclyn Symes were travelling to a rescheduled press conference to respond to the allegations.

A small detail? Perhaps. But the qualitative difference between sitting down with Victoria’s top cop for a comprehensive briefing and a conversation on the run emerged a few hours later when bewildered police officers started questioning why the government had announced Operation Hawk as a new thing.

It isn’t, as a Victoria Police statement later confirmed. Operation Hawk was hatched nine months ago after 60 Minutes and this masthead exposed the criminal infiltration of the CFMEU construction union in the first iteration of its Building Bad series.

Either the premier and Symes misunderstood what Nugent told them about Hawk, or they were sold a turkey.

The only things new about Operation Hawk are it has more allegations to follow up, courtesy of The Age’s investigative journalist Nick McKenzie, and four more detectives to help with the extra work.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on Tuesday blamed Acting Chief Commissioner Rick Nugent for giving her incorrect information relating to a police investigation into the construction sector.Credit: Penny Stephens

Victoria Police, in an attempt to bridge the gap between the premier’s public statements and reality, claimed it “launched a newly-expanded Operation Hawk” on Monday with “a renewed focus and additional resources”.

In doing so, VicPol soiled its own nest.

Every fortnight since last July, Assistant Commissioner Martin O’Brien and the other steering committee members responsible for Operation Hawk have met to discuss the progress of their work. By any reasonable measure, it has been modest.

Financial crime squad detectives have assessed more than 50 allegations of corrupt or criminal behaviour in the construction industry and VicPol’s specialist bikie-busting unit, Taskforce Echo, has been on the case.

The sum total of these efforts is that one CFMEU official, Joel Shackleton, 41, has been charged with making a threat to kill and making a threat to cause injury.

He has vowed to contest the charges and his matter remains before the court. There are two other matters under investigation.

Evidence against Shackleton – video footage of him allegedly telling the owners of an Indigenous labour hire company operating at a Big Build site that “I’ll f---ing take your soul and I’ll rip your f---ing head off” – was published by this masthead and provided to police.

A transcript of this footage, which was taken in 2022, was also provided to Jacinta Allan, who was transport minister at the time. She took a year to respond and said it was a matter for the contractor, rather than the government.

This brings us closer to understanding the government’s true level of urgency when it comes to allegations of bullying, threats and intimidation at its own building sites.

Another barometer is the seven-month delay between the Victorian parliament passing new laws to enable the Chief Commissioner of Police to issue Serious Crime Prevention Orders banning criminal organisations from government building sites and those laws coming into force.

Laws that target organisations rather than crimes need to be deployed with care, as successful legal challenges in other jurisdictions have shown. Before Nugent can make use of the Victorian laws, a regulatory impact statement must be prepared.

But, if the government and police think these laws can help to clean up corruption, they shouldn’t wait until the end of August to start using them.

Allan was not trying to mislead us on Monday when she mistakenly announced Operation Hawk as a new police investigation. As she has repeatedly said since, her statements at the press conference were based on the information she was provided by Nugent.

The bigger issue is that, before Monday morning, neither the premier nor the minister for industrial relations had apparently ever heard of Operation Hawk.

This reflects an extraordinary absence of curiosity within government about what Victoria Police has been doing since the first Building Bad stories broke.

Allan has spent a lot of time talking about victims of crime. She cites their experience and concerns as the primary reason she is tightening the state’s bail laws to put more young offenders behind bars.

When organised crimes gangs infiltrate Big Build construction sites, the government is among the victims of their crimes. The standover tactics, threats and intimidation detailed by this masthead ultimately come at a cost to projects the government funds with public money.

If the premier has “zero tolerance” for this behaviour, as she said on Tuesday, she should be better informed about what Victoria Police is doing to get rid of it.

Instead, Operation Hawk made a goose out the government, Victoria Police and anyone who believes they are serious about stopping big rorts on the Big Build.

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