Wednesday, 3 June 2026

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (16:01): Well, that is a great motion to move – and what an afternoon to rise to speak in this place about the ongoing corruption. We have heard this afternoon about this government’s attempt to ram through a piece of legislation that was waved in front of this Parliament at 11 o’clock this morning. It is now 4 o’clock, and within a matter of hours this government plans to pass that through this chamber. It is about the future of democracy in this state, and it is a future that this government is backing on to make sure that it can do its darnedest to win the next election by absolutely undercutting any forms of opposition in the state.

The corruption in this state of Victoria today, it is grey, it is white, it is corruption-corruption, it is black corruption, it is red corruption, it is every type of corruption, and unfortunately it permeates so many elements of Victorians’ lives. We have heard a lot in recent months about Big Build corruption, and that is the most visible form of corruption that we see in this state. But to think that at a time when the community is genuinely interested to know how this government deals with corruption, how it deals with dishonesty, how it deals with probity, this government seeks to rush through a piece of legislation about donations for election funding in a matter of hours in this Parliament. This is a problem that the government was well aware of for a very long time. It lost in the High Court back in April; it has had since then to work constructively with all sides of Parliament to make a fair piece of legislation that could hold us in good stead. But despite being thrown out in the High Court only a matter of months ago, it is prepared to rush through a piece of legislation that smells so bad that it is at risk of being thrown out of the High Court again in coming months by the same people that challenged it the first time, and they will probably have a few extras joining them in the pursuit of having this government see reason on what is fair for the democracy of this wonderful state.

If I can highlight just a couple of points that really smell about this piece of legislation – this piece of legislation that all Victorians should be worried about – what it does is it caps donations. Well, that is not a bad thing. Most people probably see reason as to why we should limit the amount of influence someone can have; no-one disputes that very much. But what we find intolerable is that while everybody else is limited in where they can get their funds and how they can get them, the one party in the chamber – and maybe another one, but one in particular – who at the base of its criticism at the moment is the way it has allowed unions to run rampant in this state, allegedly fleecing up to $15 billion from taxpayers, has now left a loophole that they can continue to receive funds from those same organisations that they are actively turning a blind eye to in corruption. Now, that makes no sense to anybody. It is unfair, it is unjust, but worst of all it is undemocratic. And not only that, it continues to create a terrible miasma of corruption – a fume, a smell of corruption – that will infiltrate every piece of activity and thinking in this state.

For the government of the day, for this Labor government, not to see the problem with a situation where its friends in the union movement can continue to funnel funds to them, funds that we know are in part topped up by theft and corruption and poor dealings on out-of-control Big Build sites around Victoria, is a disgrace. It is something that Victorians will not stand for. Not only that, it belittles the fine democracy that we should all be proud of here in the state of Victoria.

But this afternoon I also want to touch on the Big Build corruption in its many forms. One of the disappointing things all Victorians have witnessed in recent months is a Premier and senior ministers who continually say there is nothing they can do about it. They continually say that. We heard last week in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) hearings from a Premier who said it is not her responsibility to do something, it is the police’s responsibility. I raise the point: if you are the head honcho, the boss of this state, the person who can move football games from Federation Square and then back to Federation Square, and if you have the ability to cancel the Commonwealth Games and fund them in another country, you have an awful lot of power – but the one power you refuse to use is to make sure that the projects that you oversee, the projects that your government says are its signature projects, are in fact being run and managed in the best interests of Victorians. Our Premier refuses to do that. Not only does she refuse to do it, she actually expects others to do it.

We heard last week in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings that the Premier thinks it is the responsibility of an 18-year-old, an apprentice, a young woman tradie, a young person in a workplace who has been stood over or asked to do criminal or corrupt actions, to report the goings on to the police. But when the Premier gets told on the front page of the leading newspapers in the state – on the front page of the Age and the Herald Sun – and in every news bulletin for the night, where people relay in technicolour the problems on the Big Build sites, the Premier says, ‘That’s not my responsibility. That needs to be referred to someone else. Someone else needs to look into that.’ The people of Victoria know that the current Premier was the minister responsible, for months and years before she became Premier, for these big projects. She had the opportunity at that time to do something about it, and she did not. She has had the opportunity as Premier to do something about crime and corruption on the Big Build sites, and she has done nothing about it. In fact you could almost argue she has reverted to victim blaming by saying it is the responsibility of those who have been badly done by by the crime and corruption to do all the reporting.

What is even more disappointing is that in the state of Victoria today there would not be a tradie ute- or crew cab-driving Victorian who is not aware of the crime and corruption on the Big Build sites. Everybody knows about it. As MPs, we hear stories all the time. People on the street hear about it. People in our communities hear about it. People in our communities are worried about these things. We all know that letters of complaint have been sent. And to think that, once again at PAEC hearings last week, when quizzed, the Premier’s chief of staff and the chiefs of staff on the Big Build projects, infrastructure projects and public transport projects all looked like they were blind – ‘We didn’t hear anything. We haven’t heard anything. We haven’t seen anything. No-one’s told us.’ The only people in the state of Victoria today that are unaware of the crime and corruption and the graft and the bikies and the drug dealing and the prostitution on worksites are in fact the Premier of this state, leading ministers and the heads of bureaucracy. It is shameful to think such ignorance has not only been put out on a daily basis by the Premier but put in front of a parliamentary hearing, where these people said, ‘We have heard nothing.’ It is impossible to believe. It is improbable for Victorians to be expected to believe that everybody knows there is a problem except the government. When presented with the facts, when presented with the stories, when presented with the case studies, they say, ‘It’s not our responsibility.’

What is even more shocking is that these details, these reports, these inquiries are not coming to the fore in Victoria through the Parliament, through normal inquiries, through normal processes. The Geoffrey Watson report came to light through a Queensland inquiry into crime and corruption. It is unbelievable to think that a detailed report that could be of great use to a competent, fair-minded government in routing out crime and corruption on their Big Build sites is not tabled here in this Parliament, is not made available to this Parliament and to the people of Victoria, but is instead presented in Queensland as the only way the author can get it put forward and have light shine upon the corruption that we have in Victoria. It had to come out in Queensland. It was back on 11 February that the Geoffrey Watson report came out with the now infamous $15 billion figure.

At the end of the day this Premier and her ministers are the only people in Victoria that do not believe the $15 billion figure. It has not taken anybody else by surprise. But it has taken the Premier by surprise, and she says it is not true. I say, Premier, if it is not $15 billion, how many billion is it? How many billion will you concede it is? Because, quite frankly, if it is $1, Premier, you have a problem. To have $15 billion, you have got a massive problem, and you refuse to do anything about it. It is not only Geoffrey Watson’s good work but also the extensive reporting done by Nick McKenzie at the Age and through 60 Minutes that has been prepared to expose the shortcomings of this government, which this government, this Premier and her ministers, have refuted at every turn.

Not only that but on 25 May another Parliament in Australia had to do the heavy lifting, that being a Senate estimates hearing. What did Senate estimates hear? They heard that there are 56 Big Build project allegations currently before them. Riddle me this: how does the federal Parliament get this brought to its attention, and federal bureaucrats and federal ministers get 56 allegations of crime and corruption on Victorian projects, but magically the Victorian government, the Victorian Premier and the Victorian ministers, hear nothing. They see nothing. They leave the work to others in the country. They leave the work on fighting this important issue of crime and corruption in Victoria to the newspapers, they leave it to the federal Parliament, which by the way is a Labor one so it is not like you can accuse them of being partisan. They leave it to the Queensland Parliament.

It is simply not good enough. Victorians expect their hard-earned dollars to be spent well and spent wisely, and it should leave fear in every Victorian’s heart to think that one of the signature projects that this Premier has banged on about since 2018 is a tunnel from nowhere to nowhere for allegedly $35 billion. A $35 billion tunnel that no-one knew about until 2 minutes before the 2018 election. We never knew about it. You made it up. $35 billion – you got the quote for it from Quotes Are Us in 2020, and you want the Victorian people to believe that the $35 billion quote you got seven years ago is still accurate. Is there a quote anywhere on planet Australia, on this continent, that you received seven years ago that any builder would stand by today? The answer quite simply is they would not. It is a lie. It is a misleading of the people of Victoria. But worse still, that $35 billion quote, that $35 billion unverified quote, does not have $1 in the budget.

So I ask this question: when we are so worried about crime and corruption and when we are so worried about the finances of this state, how on earth can a signature project that this government continues to rattle on about not be in the budget? How can we expect it to be paid for fairly, openly, honestly and transparently when it is not in the budget? It is an old quote, and yet we know it will continue to fuel the misdeeds and the corruption that we have all seen laid out night after night in the press, in the newspapers and in common thought around the state of Victoria. We know that infrastructure is important to Victoria. Victorians need a government they can trust to build infrastructure well, build infrastructure on time and build infrastructure in a way that adds benefit and ongoing growth and opportunity for Victorians, but that is not what we are getting in Victoria. Instead we have stories of bikies, of drug deals, of corruption and of mistitled work programs such as women in construction, which is a Labor government policy as well as a bikie-corrupted work group. They have got the same name. This needs to stop.