A political divide has opened over the management of major projects in Victoria ahead of the Big Build royal commission’s first public hearings, with Opposition Leader Jess Wilson vowing to keep and expand an independent advisory body that Premier Ben Carroll has pledged to abolish.
This week’s hearings for the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria is expected to focus on allegations that former premier Jacinta Allan helped shoehorn the CFMEU and a corrupt labour hire company into a level crossing project.
The Kourakis royal commission has announced that its first public hearings, starting on Monday, will examine the Gap Road project in Sunbury, a level crossing removal completed in 2023.
This masthead has previously reported allegations that Allan, as the government minister responsible for the Big Build at the time, pressured the Rail Infrastructure Alliance consortium overseeing the project to side with the CFMEU in a demarcation dispute with its rival building union, the AWU.
The allegation, which Allan denies, is that her staff, through public servants working for Rail Projects Victoria, directed the consortium to “cut a deal with the CFMEU”. A subsequent agreement struck between the CFMEU and the consortium partners gave the union an industrial stranglehold over the Sunbury site.
The CFMEU, once entrenched at the site, demanded that labour hire company BK Labour be used on the project. The company was subsequently investigated by Victoria Police and this year deregistered by the Labour Hire Authority for providing false invoices to the regulator.
There are separate allegations before the royal commission, also denied by Allan, that doctored costings were included in the business case for another Big Build project, the Melbourne Airport Rail Link, and that a public service executive was threatened with the sack to ensure the proposed rail line followed the government’s preferred route.
On Sunday, Wilson announced that the fate of Infrastructure Victoria – a statutory agency established early in the life of the Andrews Labor government to provide strategic advice on the state’s infrastructure priorities and appraise the merits of individual projects – would be decided by the November 28 state election.
In August, shortly after taking over as premier, Carroll earmarked the agency for the bureaucratic scrap heap. However, with it having just completed a round of structural redundancies as part of an annual budget reduction from $9 million to $6 million, Wilson announced on Sunday that she would not only retain Infrastructure Victoria, but broaden its remit.
Wilson took up the cudgels for the agency during a visit to a mixed martial arts gym in Collingwood to promote a $40 million pitch to lure UFC bouts to Melbourne.
“I think it’s an important body that hasn’t been well used by this Labor government,” she said of Infrastructure Victoria.
“This is a government that has been choosing projects because of politics by putting their own political interests over that of the Victorian taxpayer. So we will keep Infrastructure Victoria. We will look at how we potentially strengthen their role.”
When it was established in 2015, the agency was made responsible for publishing a 30-year infrastructure plan for the state, one which was to be updated every five years. It was also given authority to provide advice to the treasurer when requested on any government or private sector proposals for major projects.
“Government must prioritise and select the projects and reforms that deliver the highest public net benefit,” Allan told parliament at the time. “These decisions are not easy, but they should always be based on evidence and robust, transparent analysis.”
In NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and at the federal level, similar bodies provide advice to governments about major projects. In some cases, this advice is provided before projects are announced and publicly committed to.
However, in Victoria, the agency first learnt about the Suburban Rail Loop – the state’s largest infrastructure project – when the government announced the project via Facebook in the lead up to the 2018 election. Its advice was also not sought at the preliminary stage of the Melbourne Airport Rail Link or of any other Big Build project.
In December last year, Infrastructure Victoria was identified for the chop by the Silver Review of the Victorian Public Service.
“Infrastructure Victoria has undertaken good work but now is an appropriate time to absorb its operations into a department,” the review stated.
The Allan government decided not to scrap the agency, but said its operating budget would be reduced. In August this year, the Carroll government announced it would axe Infrastructure Victoria entirely to find “commonsense savings” to the budget.
The announcement was slammed by key stakeholder groups who lauded the role of Infrastructure Victoria and urged the government to reconsider its decision.
“With an election on the Victorian horizon, independent scrutiny of the investment pipeline is more critical than ever,” Consult Australia chief Jonathan Cartledge said. “The agency needs to be strengthened, not abolished.”
Wilson said that if the Coalition forms the next state government, it would look for ways to put Infrastructure Victoria to better use.
“We’re very open to looking at how we expand their remit to provide that advice to government,” she said. “We are certainly looking at how we can bring more transparency, more accountability to major infrastructure projects here in Victoria, and that’s exactly why we will keep Infrastructure Victoria.”
The first block of royal commission public hearings is scheduled to run until November 20 – two days after early voting begins for the state election.
During her time as premier, Allan resisted pressure from integrity experts and some of her own MPs to establish a royal commission into the Building Bad scandal. Within hours of replacing her as premier in July, Carroll announced he would call one.
As the royal commission begins its public examinations of witnesses, the election campaign will swing on to issues including law and order, with Labor and the Coalition expected to outline further ideas to bolster community safety.
Read more on the Victorian election:
Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.From our partners
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