Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s IBAC reforms have come far too late and will take far too long
It would be nice to say better late than never, but even that doesn’t hold true for Premier Jacinta Allan’s decision to finally accept that Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog needs more powers to tackle corruption in the $109 billion Capital Building.
The problem with Allan’s statement on Monday afternoon was that Victorians were learning that IBAC will have to wait until the end of 2027 to get the powers it desperately needs to determine which biker gangs and members of the Melbourne underworld are lining their pockets to deal with the prime minister’s infrastructure plan he previously oversaw as a minister.
Even then, a year after this year’s November election, IBAC may not have the powers it needs to do the necessary work. The devil is in the details, and this hasn’t been fully figured out yet.
Every Victorian paying attention knows Allan’s time to act is mid-2024; It has been revealed for the first time that mob figures have leveraged their unholy alliance with the Labor-friendly CFMEU to feast on the Grand Building.
Here are the facts. While bikie gangs placed their senior members, friends and relatives into cushy Big Build jobs, the CFMEU funneled lucrative Big Build subcontractors into firms in bed with underworld figures such as Mick Gatto.
Two years on, Premier Allan can’t say how much taxpayers’ money has ended up in the pockets of those who should never have had to take care of the Big Build.
Allan was quick to say that this was not $15 billion; The figure was presented separately by anti-corruption lawyer Geoffrey Watson, SC, and the Fair Work Commission’s Murray Furlong, but the prime minister was unable to offer an alternative figure.
It fails to explain to Victorians why not a single public official or politician has yet been held meaningfully accountable for the biggest corruption scandal in the state’s recent history. He cannot explain how the state will recover the looted funds. In fact, Allan does not even acknowledge the reality of corruption in the Grand Establishment.
Instead, the weasel clings to the word “allegations.” Allan, formerly the minister responsible for Major Works and now prime minister, bears ultimate responsibility for an infrastructure scheme whose design and management led to serious graft and corruption.
He has yet to meaningfully acknowledge this simple fact with any regret or admission of error. Maybe it’s too late for him to do this convincingly, but it remains the right thing to do.
It is misleading for the Prime Minister to claim (as he has for two years) that Victoria Police can investigate Big Build corruption. Much of the sordid behavior, such as the Big Build nepotism associated with the biker gang, is corrupt and even illegal, but not necessarily criminal. This means the police cannot investigate.
Much of the behavior they can examine involves organized crime and criminal secrecy laws, which police have historically used royal commissions or specialist bodies armed with coercive powers to combat. So, despite the tremendous work of Taskforce Hawk over two years, Victoria Police has not laid a single direct charge relating to Big Build corruption.
In any case, Allan’s concession on Monday that Victoria needed a sufficiently strengthened IBAC to investigate the Big Build dirty money trail belies the lie that only the police can do the job required.
Twenty years ago I reported extensively on the police drugs squad corruption scandal, which culminated in the double murder of police corruption witness Terry Hodson and his wife Christine in 2004.
Much of what I uncovered back then had to do with the difficulties that (the vast majority) honest detectives face in investigating their own.
Six months after the Hodson executions, then prime minister Steve Bracks took action, creating the Police Integrity Office and giving it the powers of a royal commission. By then Bracks had surrendered the power of the police union and was doggedly resisting calls for a strong police watchdog or royal commission.
OPI wasn’t perfect (it was eventually replaced by IBAC), but the Hodson murders were a turning point for the state, where the moral and political costs of inaction were too high. Bracks, the best Labor leader this state has ever had, responded accordingly.
In the case of Victoria’s Big Build, the turning point came in mid-2024, when the Building Bad series ended and the Albanian government moved decisively to put the cycling CFMEU into administration.
But on Monday, two years after the Victorian government was required to take meaningful action, Allan told the public they would have to wait at least another 18 months to get an IBAC with the power to start making serious inroads into the Big Build corruption mess.
In the same breath, the prime minister again insisted that he has zero tolerance for corruption. It certainly doesn’t look like it.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year three times. The winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he explores politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
