Workplace watchdog missing in action on Big Build violence claims

Victoria’s workplace watchdog has no active prosecutions involving violence on Big Build sites, despite multiple examples of abuse on taxpayer-funded projects being detailed publicly.

WorkSafe has also not investigated Women in Construction, a controversial firm with links to bikies and violent criminals, whose labour hire licence is in the process of being cancelled.

In a written response to Victoria’s budget estimates process, WorkSafe confirmed it had a dedicated inspector team that oversees the state government’s major infrastructure projects and some jointly delivered by the state and federal government.

But it also revealed there were currently no cases being pursued through the courts or the watchdog’s own processes.

“There are no current prosecutions pursuant to the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 involving risks of violence on Big Build projects,” WorkSafe’s response said.

“WorkSafe have not investigated an entity called ‘Women in Construction’.”

The revelation is in stark contrast to the amount of violence and harassment that has been revealed on taxpayer-funded projects over the past two years through Building Bad, a joint investigation between The Age, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes.

In March 2025, the stories of three women’s experience on taxpayer-funded projects were revealed as part of this series.

This included a woman who was locked in a small room at a half-built state government hospital by a man previously jailed for violence against women, who smoked ice as he detained her.

Another woman was bashed outside her taxpayer-funded work site.

One issue for WorkSafe is that it plays a different enforcement role to other watchdogs, one that involves holding employers to account if they do not manage workplace safety risks.

In an incident in which someone is abused in a workplace, police would charge the abuser and WorkSafe would penalise the employer if they were found not to have provided or properly enforced a safe environment. This makes prosecution more difficult for sites where construction firms comply with their safety obligations, but individual employees break those rules.

Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk was established in July 2024 to target criminal behaviour in the construction sector. Premier Jacinta Allan has repeatedly pointed to its efforts to clean up the industry, with at least 88 criminal charges laid so far.

The Labour Hire Authority has also cancelled the licences of 151 construction companies, and blocked another 48 applications.

A state opposition spokesperson said WorkSafe’s failure to investigate reports of women being subjected to unsafe workplaces on Big Build sites showed “how rotten the Allan government is”.

“They are willing to use the power of the state to pursue their political enemies while protecting their corrupt union allies,” the spokesperson said. “Agencies like WorkSafe exist to protect workers, not to protect Labor.”

A federal Senate hearing was told on Monday that Commonwealth officials had been alerted to 56 separate allegations of fraud, corruption, theft and criminal behaviour on Victorian government infrastructure projects. Twenty-eight of those allegations relate to just one project: the $26 billion North East Link.

When asked this week, Allan could not explain why Victoria accounted for vastly more corruption allegations on federally funded projects than other states and territories, which had only seven allegations made between them.

“Any number is concerning, which is why we have strengthened the powers of Victoria Police and the Labour Hire Authority to investigate any allegation of criminal behaviour,” she said.

The Age revealed this month that Women in Construction, a company which supplies women labourers to the North East Link, level-crossing removals and other major projects, is owned by a man convicted of domestic violence and was previously run by a drug trafficker.

Women in Construction exploited a Labor government program – developed with input of the CFMEU – to involve more women in the construction industry, and used it to secure lucrative jobs for relatives, friends and associates of gangland figures.

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