Source : the age
Premier Jacinta Allan has sought to blame inflation, rather than CFMEU corruption and standover tactics, for a cost blowout on one of the signature projects she oversaw as the minister responsible for the Big Build.
In a lengthy, combative exchange with journalists on Monday, Allan refused to heed calls for a royal commission from leading integrity figures – former IBAC chief Robert Redlich, former ombudsman Deborah Glass and barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC – and insisted that Victoria Police had the powers and resources they needed to weed out “rotten elements” from the state’s construction sector.
She said she had not read a lengthy report by contractors who worked on the Metro Tunnel, revealed by this masthead, which puts a $196.4 million price tag on the additional wages bill required to pay for “excessive” labour costs.
“Inflationary pressures on projects is not corruption,” Allan said. “People know the cost of building things have gone up, whether it’s building a home or all the way through to building major projects.
“That includes the supply of materials and also worker wages – they’ve gone up over the past 12 years, and that also includes the period of the pandemic. Now, that’s not corruption, that’s inflation.”
While inflation and disruptions to global supply chains significantly increased construction costs as Victoria emerged from the pandemic, the report compiled by the contractors involved in the Metro Tunnel identifies separate, additional costs caused by the union’s industrial demands for non-productive workers to be hired on site.
These workers included additional crane observers, traffic controllers and cleaners, who, in the contractors’ view and according to industry standards, were beyond what was required to safely deliver the project.
Allan refused to accept that the wages bills for the projects were excessive or that unjustified union demands had driven up the cost to taxpayers.
“What we know from that time, and what we know since is that wages for union workers, wages for union workers come with fairer wages, better conditions, safer workplaces, and that is a cost, but that is a cost that is about supporting those workers to do this work to deliver projects,” she said.
“My responsibility as minister was to ensure that those projects were delivered, and that the work was done by agencies to ensure those projects were delivered.”
She restated her opposition to a royal commission into Big Build corruption, saying it would produce delayed, rather than immediate, action, and expressed confidence in Victoria Police, the Labour Hire Authority and the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission to deal with any allegations of criminal or corrupt conduct associated with major projects.
“I do have confidence in Victoria Police, and I have confidence in the work of Victoria Police, and the additional powers that we have given Victoria Police,” the premier said.
“I don’t understand why, if after all this time, if people hold information or evidence, that they … wouldn’t be immediately referring that to Victoria Police.”
Allan said she had watched Sunday night’s 60 Minutes program which catalogued the extent to which Mick Gatto, a survivor of Melbourne’s gangland war of the early 2000s, had inserted himself as a middleman between contractors and labour-hire companies seeking to secure work on Big Build projects and the cartel-like CFMEU.
However, she was unwilling to publicly acknowledge that Gatto had profited handsomely from this arrangement.
“If there is evidence around their behaviour that goes to criminal behaviour, it should be referred to Victoria Police,” she said.
Watson, who led a commission of inquiry into the CFMEU by the union’s own administrators, has estimated the cost of Big Build corruption at $15 billion.
Allan rejected Watson’s accusation that she has personally failed to take responsibility for Big Build corruption under her watch as a minister and now premier – “he is wrong” – and referred to the number of charges laid by police and licences revoked by the Labor Hire Authority since the scandal first broke two years ago.
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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.
