Those in charge as Big Build rorts flourished must do three things – or quit

You can’t travel anywhere in Melbourne without coming across the state government’s Big Build. The $100 billion package of projects is not only transforming the city’s infrastructure, it has historically been a recognised vote winner.

That glow has worn off as costs blow out by tens of billions of dollars and the state budget groans under the expense. But as The Age has revealed repeatedly in the past year, there are far more serious costs to consider.

As an example, consider who is employed on these massive publicly funded projects. Men like bikies Joel Leavitt and convicted killer Johnny “Two Guns” Walker are pocketing massive salaries as union delegates, while former Hells Angels enforcer Sammy “The Turk” Ercan is being paid to resolve workplace disputes.

As part of The Age’s latest burst of reporting this week, corruption-busting barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, who is working for the CFMEU’s administrator to investigate wrongdoing, revealed there were hundreds of bikies and thugs in lucrative roles on construction sites, roles that often don’t even require them to turn up for work.

There are signs of change. When the scandal broke last year, CFMEU secretary Zach Smith told us that the union “unapologetically believes in second chances”. By yesterday he was hailing a resolution of 500 union delegates at an emergency meeting to “draw a line in the sand against criminals or corrupt elements”.

Who is not employed on these sites? Women like Lilly Munro, who, after reporting an incident in which she was allegedly trapped in a locked room with a man convicted for threatening to kill a woman, was “flagged” by the CFMEU and found she couldn’t get work in the sector.

Another woman found herself black-banned after she reported being bashed by a Rebels bikie employed as a CFMEU health and safety representative.

These were not isolated incidents. As campaigner Jess Hill told The Age, men whose stock-in-trade is violence bring those methods to the workplaces of the state’s major infrastructure projects.

And we’re paying for this with our taxes.

After this masthead’s revelations last year, Premier Jacinta Allan announced an inquiry into the CFMEU headed by public servant Greg Wilson, saying he would need to talk to a range of government departments and agencies, and sector representatives. Allan said if that included ministers, including her, that would be fine.

At the time, our reporter Nick McKenzie questioned that inquiry’s limited terms of reference. Watson this week validated those concerns, arguing the Wilson inquiry was effectively a cover-up.

Geoffrey Watson, SC, has been investigating issues at the CFMEU for the union’s administrator.Credit: 60 Minutes

“Where [the Wilson inquiry] didn’t go was where it needed to go,” Watson told us. “It needed actually to go inside the doors of the senior bureaucrats and actually into the ministerial offices in Spring Street. It didn’t do any of that.”

As McKenzie has pointed out this week, the people suffering as a result of this state of affairs don’t care about politics. They just want a solution, whether that means a fresh and more precisely targeted inquiry or for CFMEU administrator Mark Irving, KC, to be given more resources and a mandate to seize assets.

Whether we look at the police, the public service or their political masters, this sorry saga has been marked by failures of accountability.

When this state’s plans for the Commonwealth Games fell in a heap in 2023, we noted that “in a normal government, the person or people responsible … would resign”. The minister for Commonwealth Games delivery was Jacinta Allan. The minister for public transport and the minister for transport and infrastructure in the first two terms of the Andrews government – the politician in the hard hat on countless Big Build sites – was Jacinta Allan.

Watson’s investigations are not yet finished, but he felt he had to sound the alarm. Others did so in 2022, writing first to Allan and then to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to set out the sordid details of who was employed on the Big Build – and who wasn’t. Allan’s clumsy response this week was to spruik as new a police operation that has been going on since July. It was an insult to the public’s intelligence.

As Chip Le Grand writes today, it tells us much about the government’s real enthusiasm for addressing this crisis and the hollowness of its declarations of “zero tolerance”.

We believe that those who oversaw the growth of this cancer in our state, at a minimum, owe Victorians an explanation, genuine solutions and an apology. If they can’t do that – and soon – then perhaps they do not deserve positions of leadership.

Just to be clear, Premier, that includes you.

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