By Noel Towell
The collapse of a major building company has left three crucial Melbourne public school upgrades in limbo and a small army of tradies, who are owed millions of dollars, claiming the Victorian government has abandoned them.
School building jobs worth more than $57 million have sat idle for three months after the company’s collapse, with school communities in the dark about when work might restart and growing doubts about hundreds of school places for the 2026 school year.
Aaron Lanfranchi with fellow tradesmen Chris Richardson and Anthony Richardson at the Coburg High School worksite.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Subcontractors on the school building jobs at Hallam, Fawkner and Coburg are chasing tens of millions of dollars from builder Monaco Hickey, which was hired by the Victorian School Building Authority to complete the jobs.
The subcontractors, mostly small businesses and sole traders, say the authority, a division of the state Education Department, has abandoned them.
Monaco Hickey’s parent company, construction giant Roberts Co, was working on projects around Melbourne worth more than $1 billion and went into administration in March, owing trade creditors an estimated $50 million and halting work at the three school builds.
Construction of a $15 million science and arts building and a food tech hub at John Fawkner Secondary College, an $18 million tech building at Coburg High and $24.6 million buildings at Hallam Secondary College, all remain stalled three months on.
It is now unclear if the 250 additional places the Coburg build was due to provide for the 2026 school year will be available. Hallam was due to have classrooms for another 225 children, a gym and administration space built in time for the 2027 intake.
As the Victorian School Building Authority tries to find a new builder to take over the projects, out-of-pocket tradies say that in the event of a corporate collapse, the authority’s contracts push all the risks onto the small business or sole trader subcontractors.
Tradies are reluctant to speak publicly for fear of losing work in the future, but have formed a group, Subcontractors for Accountability.
Tradies have told The Age that they are owed between $70,000 and $700,000, with no immediate prospect of getting paid, and some are facing bankruptcy.
They argue that the authority’s standard builder contract stipulates that the main builder’s invoices must be paid within 21 days.
But payment terms of 30 days are imposed on subcontractors, meaning in practice that they are the last to be paid and the most likely to be unpaid when a project shuts down amid an insolvency.
The group says the authority’s contract flies in the face of prompt payment laws in force since 2002, and a 2017 state Labor government ministerial directive mandating risk-sharing on public construction projects, while ignoring the warning of a 2022 parliamentary inquiry highlighting a growing crisis of unpaid subcontractors.
In a submission to the government, the group argues that the state’s massive school building program had built unfairness to small businesses into its operating model and that the fallout was taking an enormous human toll.
“The system wasn’t flawed, it was designed this way,” the submission reads.
“By enabling faster payments to builders and slower terms for subcontractors, the VSBA and government agencies intentionally shifted all risk down the chain while retaining protections and guarantees for themselves.”
State opposition education spokesperson Jess Wilson accused the Labor government of mismanaging the Victorian School Building Authority and called for immediate intervention from Education Minister Ben Carroll on behalf of the tradies.
“It’s unacceptable the Allan Labor government is leaving small business counterparties high and dry when a project they are managing goes bad,” Wilson said.
“The minister for education must intervene and instruct the Victorian School Building Authority to assist in settling all outstanding subcontractor payments for works completed on Victorian government school projects.
“These botched projects not only impact students and school communities but are also resulting in enormous financial losses to subcontractors at no fault of their own.”
The state government said the authority had fulfilled its contractual obligations with the lead contractor, Monaco Hickey, and it did not have a contract with subcontractors.
Roberts Co did not respond to a request for comment, and the company’s administrator, McGrath Nicol, declined to discuss the matter other than to say the next creditors’ meeting is on June 30.
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