Melbourne company ablaze after yet another firebombing in construction war

A construction company’s headquarters was firebombed in the early hours of Tuesday, as a campaign of arson and intimidation continues to erupt in Victoria’s building industry.

The company, El Dorado Contractors, based in Melbourne’s west, has now been firebombed twice in a fortnight, but Tuesday’s latest attack has done more damage than the first.

Fire Rescue Victoria crews responded to several calls of a factory on fire in Derrimut.Credit: Luis Ascui

Victoria Police said emergency services were called to the fire on Calarco Road in Derrimut about 5.35am.

No one had been inside the factory at the time of the blaze, which was being treated as suspicious, police said.

The attack will likely be assigned to the Operation Hawk taskforce, the nascent police investigative team assigned to probing crime and corruption in the building industry.

Last week, this masthead revealed how a campaign of firebombings and intimidation had erupted in Victoria’s construction sector as underworld players seek to control pockets of an industry supposedly being cleaned up by state and federal government reforms.

The campaign has intensified over recent weeks. Equipment on a Victorian government-backed social housing site was torched earlier this month and the family homes of major construction company directors were separately targeted in attacks involving arson or violent confrontation.

The ongoing attacks will raise serious questions for the state government and Victoria Police, which last year failed to assign detectives or adequate resources to investigate crime in the construction industry after the Building Bad investigation was published by this masthead and 60 Minutes.

In March, amid fresh reports of crime and corruption involving the building industry and the construction wing of the CFMEU, police scrambled to assign a small number of detectives to a taskforce codenamed “Hawk”.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday morning, Premier Jacinta Allan said she had not been briefed on the Derrimut attack and repeated her previous comments that any allegations of criminal behaviour on worksites should be referred to police.

“I don’t think it would be responsible to comment on an incident I have not been briefed on, nor to speculate on what is behind the incident overnight,” she said.

“That is not something I will be drawn to at this point.

“But again, in terms of the work we are taking more broadly, we are pulling out the rotten culture that has been reported on across the industry working with the federal government-appointed administrator.”

When asked whether law enforcement needed additional resources to deal with the spate of workplace firebombings, Allan said those questions were best directed to police.

The firebombing attacks on Victorian construction sites began about 18 months ago but have intensified since the union was plunged into administration in August after the Building Bad reports.

This masthead has confirmed at least 11 arson attacks on construction firms since September 2023, although the true number is likely to be higher because some may not have been reported to police.

In each of the three nighttime attacks targeting construction company directors, family members, including children, of the directors were at home, according to official sources, speaking anonymously due to fear of repercussions.

Allan said that it was deeply traumatic for any family to go through such an experience, and that her thoughts were with those affected.

“They are victims of crime which is why anyone with any evidence of what has happened in any of these incidences should absolutely refer them to Victoria Police as [they] have all the tools and the powers and the resources to investigate criminal behaviour and bring these alleged offenders to account,” she said.

Expensive machinery owned by subcontractors at construction sites run by major building companies and developers has also been targeted in firebombings.

A firebombing about a fortnight ago was directed at a subcontractor on the site of a $35 million state government-backed social housing development in the Geelong suburb of Newtown. That subcontractor was El Dorado, the firm targeted again on Tuesday morning.

The fire was at El Dorado scaffolding, in Calarco Drive, DerrimutCredit: Luis Ascui

There was another arson attack earlier this month at a site in Footscray managed by building company Hickory.

In November, demolition giant Delta had two of its earthmoving rigs – worth up to an estimated $2 million each – torched on a major Docklands worksite.

The attacks have shocked the construction sector, with insiders questioning whether the government, CFMEU administrators and authorities have the capacity to combat those behind them.

Opposition Leader Brad Battin has criticised the state government’s handling of Operation Hawk, saying that a lack of arrests showed it had inadequate resourcing.

“We’ve already seen [the government] lose control when it comes to tobacco here in Victoria, and now they’re losing control with building sites,” he said.

“We hope that Operation Hawk can act fast on this and get the results we need because people deserve to be safe at work.

“The government needs to reconsider how they resource it.”

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