Thursday, 10 September 2026

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (16:28): I rise to speak in support of the Inquiries Amendment (Special Prosecutor) Bill 2026 and to specifically support the establishment of the office of the special prosecutor. Before I go on to the bill, I want to extend my condolences to constituents in my electorate. People will be reminded of the tragic accident that happened on Tuesday, where there was a rollover in a car at Parwan, and we have lost two young kids through that incident. They were two kids from the Melton electorate, one aged seven and one aged 11. One came from the Melton Specialist School, the other one from Al Iman College – two fantastic schools. I just want to extend my best wishes and condolences to the schools, the staff and the students but in particular the families. The funerals were today. It is a tragic time for those families and those communities, so I want to extend my condolences. I know everyone in the chamber would do the same. It was a tragic event.

The bill that we are talking about today is fundamentally about integrity, accountability and the proper use of public money. Those things matter to every Victorian, but they particularly matter to areas like mine in Melton – one of the fastest growing communities. We are going to double our population within the next 20-odd years, so it will go from 220,000 to 450,000 by 2045. We all in this place speak about what we need in our electorates – new roads and improved public transport, new schools and expanded health services – and in the last 7½ years in my electorate a lot of that has been delivered and is still being delivered. Of course the new Melton hospital, which will open in 2029, is on track; it is on time and it is on budget. We need that sort of infrastructure in areas like the fast-growing area of Melton. We also need governments to build things, and that is exactly what the Andrews–Allan–Carroll government has done over the last 12 years – build things. I can certainly say that in my electorate. When governments spend billions of dollars of taxpayers money on major infrastructure, Victorians are entitled to expect the highest possible standards of integrity in return. And if there is any whisper or any evidence of corruption, criminality or serious misconduct in that process, then Victorians are entitled to expect something to be done about it. That is why the Carroll government and the Premier have established the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria. There is no point having the power to uncover wrongdoing if the system is incapable of responding effectively when that wrongdoing is uncovered.

The royal commission can investigate and can compel evidence. It can examine witnesses and it can expose conduct that might otherwise have remained hidden, but what it cannot do is prosecute. We have heard in this chamber that a royal commission is not a prosecuting authority. It cannot take evidence of criminal conduct, compile a prosecution brief or prosecute an offender. That is what this bill explicitly addresses. The bill establishes a dedicated special prosecutor who will work alongside but independently of the royal commission, and where the commission uncovers information indicating possible corruption, criminal conduct or serious misconduct, the special prosecutor will be able to ensure that relevant information gets into the hands of the authorities that can do something about it. That could be Victoria Police. It might also be IBAC. It might be a regulatory or licensing authority like the Labour Hire Authority. It could be an appropriate Commonwealth, interstate or territory body. The important point is that we do not simply collect evidence, put it in a box and wait for the final report. So if information emerges that warrants further investigation, this is the pathway for that investigation to occur. And if information emerges that warrants regulatory action, there should be a pathway for that action to occur – because ultimately, where the evidence establishes criminal offending, nobody should imagine that their position, their connections or the size of the projects that they are working on somehow put them beyond the reach of the law.

I spoke about this recently here in relation to the IBAC legislation that we were debating, and that is what accountability means. This Carroll Labor government has not established a royal commission for appearances. The Premier’s first act was to do this. We have established it to get answers, and we deserve that. Through this bill we are putting in place the machinery to make sure that where those answers reveal wrongdoing there can be some consequences. That is an important distinction. It is easy in politics to demand an inquiry – that is probably why those opposite do it so often – but it is much harder to establish one with the powers to uncover uncomfortable truths and then build a framework to enable it to act on what it finds. The independence built into this bill is incredibly important.

Those opposite can rest assured that the special prosecutor will not be subject to the direction or the control of the Premier or any other minister when performing their functions or exercising their powers. The government establishes this office, but the government does not get to tell the special prosecutor where to look, what information to pass on or whose conduct should attract scrutiny. This is precisely how an integrity process should operate, and that is exactly what we are instigating. The special prosecutor will also remain a public body for the purposes of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Act 2011 and therefore will remain subject to IBAC oversight.

Independence does not mean an absence of accountability. Both are built into this legislation, and the bill also makes an important change to the powers available to royal commissions more generally. Currently, a royal commission can compel a person to produce documents or things already in existence, but evidence does not always exist in a convenient document. Sometimes what is most important and what matters is what somebody knows. This legislation will allow a royal commission to require a person to provide information or a written statement, including by answering specific questions in writing. It means a royal commission can get directly to the information it needs. It can obtain written evidence without necessarily requiring a person to appear and give oral evidence at a hearing, where that is appropriate. Of course these reforms will endure beyond this particular royal commission.

I also want to make one point very clear: scrutiny of corruption and misconduct in the construction sector should never be confused with an attack on construction workers. The overwhelming majority of people working in Victorian construction sites get up in the morning, go to work, do an honest day’s work, drink a few iced coffees and go home to their families. They are hard workers. They deserve to be well paid and they deserve to be well represented. I can assure you of that out in my electorate with the construction workers out there and the jobs that they have done. I will just rattle off a few things that have happened in the last seven years. There is the current building of the Melton hospital – I think there are about 500 or 600 construction workers onsite. It is an amazing building that is coming out of the ground. There are the four level crossing removals along the Melton line. They have done that ahead of time; it is just incredible work that they have done. The new Melton railway station opened last week, and we had the minister come out to open it. It is a four-platform station. It is state of the art, and the construction workers that worked on that and the engineers and the way that they pieced it all together were just incredible. The six new public schools that we have built, one secondary school and five primary schools, are incredible – in seven years. Construction workers have done a hard day’s work, been well paid and delivered good outcomes and good infrastructure for such a fast-growing area. A new TAFE college will start being built very shortly. Again, construction workers are really doing the hard work. Community facilities have been built. And of course we are constructing a stabling yard for new Metro trains and V/Line trains that will run along the Melton line as a precursor to electrification for Melton.

This is an important bill to introduce this special prosecutor that will assist the royal commission. It will hopefully get to the heart of the issues that may have occurred. There is no guarantee that there is anything that they will find, but you never know, and that is what it is all about. It is about a proper process. It is an important bill, and I commend it to the house.

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (16:38): It is wonderful to follow the member for Melton and to make a contribution on the Inquiries Amendment (Special Prosecutor) Bill 2026. Many members have spoken on this bill already and canvassed its contents and provisions. I will return to them in a little while, but I want to position this in the broader sweep of the legislative agenda of the Carroll government. I remember on the Premier’s first day as Premier he jogged up to Kmart in Airport West, where he had formerly worked, and announced that a Carroll Labor government would legislate workplace protection orders – and so it has. Workers in retail settings, transport settings and other areas where those WPOs will take effect will be safer as a consequence.

The other first-day action of the Premier was to call a royal commission to fully, thoroughly and independently investigate the allegations that have been made about conduct in the construction sector. That is a good thing to have done, and it will be accompanied by, as the Premier announced, the instigation of a special prosecutor, the type of which has never existed in Victoria before. As other members have articulated, the royal commission is an important vehicle. The commissioner himself has been appointed, a former Chief Justice of South Australia, and he in turn has appointed counsellors to assist him in that important work – senior silks, including Christopher Carr SC and another KC. They will be assisting the commissioner in the investigations of the commission. The commission will then report. But it cannot, as other members have said, directly instigate charges to follow up on instances, allegations, evidence of wrongdoing and misconduct.

I first became aware of the term ‘special prosecutor’ in 1998, when I was passing through the United States. There was quite a lot of discussion on the television at that point, quite a lot of what I think Sunil Gavaskar might have referred to as ‘naughty words’, in the context of the Kenneth Starr investigation into President Clinton. That special prosecutor was a very different type of special prosecutor to the one that this bill countenances, insofar as that was a hyperpolitical inquiry into the conduct of President Clinton, which led to his impeachment. What this bill seeks to do is introduce a fully independent special prosecutor. Clearly it is subject to the legislation of this Parliament and so it will be a creation of Parliament, but in its conduct, in its operations and its actions, it will be entirely independent of government. I think, as the member for Broadmeadows very articulately put it, to maintain and sustain the confidence of Victorians it is important to have both that perception and reality of independence from government when the issues which are being investigated revolve at their heart around the expenditure of public money, which is obviously governed through the budget processes by acts of Parliament and by decisions of the executive in this place and the place upstairs. The special prosecutor is an important innovation to ensure that the allegations which have led to the royal commission are fully investigated and that action is taken, should that be deemed to be appropriate. The office of the special prosecutor, should this legislation pass, as I hope indeed it does, and I believe that there is a bipartisanship to see that it is passed, will work alongside the commission to refer any individuals who are identified through the work of the commission to authorities for prosecution or indeed for regulatory action. So this is a very real, tangible sign of the Carroll Labor government’s commitment to fully investigating any instance of wrongdoing in the context of the construction sector, where too many people who have done too much good work are being besmirched by the actions of a few.

I refer the house, in my contribution, to the impact of the construction sector in my own electorate, because the impact of the public works budget of this government has led to the creation of the first secondary school in Greenvale, for example. Greenvale Secondary College is a magnificent school that is physically brilliant, that was constructed on time and on budget and that has given young people in Greenvale a school from year 7 to year 12 that never existed before in a growing community that had had land marked out for a school for well over three decades, where no government had ever constructed a school before. But this government did. This government had acted upon the plans of generations to build a school to give young people the capacity to access an education, and that is a magnificent symbol of what can happen when public works budgets are expended effectively and efficiently. It may be the case that that has not always been true in every project, and that needs to be fully, fully investigated. That is exactly what the royal commission will do, and indeed the special prosecutor will increase the efficacy and efficiency of that process by acting upon any evidence of wrongdoing that the commission itself elicits.

It is not just in Greenvale where that public works budget has been expended with, I think, considerable efficiency and efficacy. I note every time I drive down Bell Street to the east to visit family or the Austin Hospital on occasion, there are two magnificent sites that strike you. There is, I believe, the Prix Versailles–winning Bell station in Preston, which is a magnificent structure. I was really taken by the member for Northcote’s stunning depiction of that magnificent structure. But there is also, if you pass under that wonderful station from west to east, your own face, Acting Speaker Lambert, so beautifully depicted on the northern side of Bell Street. To have two such magnificent structures so well juxtaposed is testament to the investment that has gone into Bell station and the area.

Returning to the bill, the office of the special prosecutor is an important step in filling out the architecture that surrounds the royal commission and its important work. The member for Melton really powerfully said that this should not be taken to besmirch the work of tens of thousands of people across Victoria who have delivered those capital works projects; the example of the level crossing removal that I talked about before is just one of nearly 100 that have taken place across metropolitan Melbourne. These are city-shaping, state-shaping reforms. The Bendigo and Ballarat railway line enhancements, for example; the Ballarat hospital; the improvements to hospitals all across metropolitan Melbourne and indeed regional Victoria; the schools which I referenced before in the context of Greenvale – this has been the biggest capital works budget in the context of education in the history of the Commonwealth. Every single school across Victoria has had upgrades made to it, and more schools have been built in this state than in the rest of the Commonwealth put together. That is what needs to happen in the context of population growth that has been really significant, with some of the highest rates of population growth in the OECD. Governments have a choice in order to respond to that: they can choose to do nothing, in which case the quality of life of Victorians or any people in any jurisdiction deteriorates, or they can invest in the services and the infrastructure that growing populations rely upon.

That is what this government has done. It is what we have done in the context of Mickleham Road stage 1, which has been delivered, and stage 2, which has been fully funded. And because of this government’s commitment to ensuring that precious taxpayer money is spent with the greatest value for money possible, savings have been achieved on certain other projects that now enable us to make a commitment that a re-elected Carroll Labor government will deliver the $494 million Somerton Road upgrade – the full duplication of Somerton Road all the way from Fleetwood Drive in Greenvale right up to Roxborough Park Drive in Roxborough Park, with new intersections along the way through Roxborough Park, Meadow Heights and Greenvale. That is the kind of work that needs to happen to ensure that infrastructure and service delivery can keep pace with growing communities. It is not good enough for governments to just shrug their shoulders when they have rapid levels of population growth in peri-urban areas that place acute pressure on existing infrastructure. Governments have to respond to that and deliver the infrastructure that people rely upon to get to work, to get to school and to get home on time and not be stuck in traffic. That is what practical, productivity-enhancing investments actually look like. That investment, that infrastructure, matters.

Where there has been any instance of any single dollar being expended in a way that is corrupt or relates to misconduct in any way, that needs to be fully investigated by the royal commission, which is entirely independent of government. I am confident that the commissioner will do that. And if there are instances of misconduct that are identified, then the special prosecutor created by the legislation on the table will enable that to be followed up. I commend this bill wholeheartedly to the house.

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (16:48): I rise today to speak in support of the Inquiries Amendment (Special Prosecutor) Bill 2026. I think at the heart of this bill is something that every Victorian, especially community members from the Bellarine, would agree with, and that is that integrity and accountability are important, as is making sure that when something does go wrong it is fully investigated and we do something about it – that we act. Every Victorian would expect any government to act in their public interest, and that is what we are here to do: to serve the public and our communities. Then when we make decisions and invest billions of dollars in projects, we ensure that that money we are spending is spent properly and those who are going to deliver the projects and the businesses who spend that money do it honestly and lawfully.

As I have said, if there is a sign of corruption or criminal conduct or serious misconduct, then that will be dealt with. It will be uncovered. It will be investigated. Importantly, as previous members have spoken about, we are making sure that we have an independent organisation such as a royal commission and a special prosecutor to ensure that that is done without interference from government. That is why, when Premier Carroll stood up and made his first decision around what he was going to do to take this state forward, it was to call for a royal commission into the Victorian building and construction industry. In doing that, he could not have acted any stronger. He stated at the time that nothing was off limits. I will quote him. He said:

I did that because Victorians deserve the truth. They deserve to know how organised crime found its way onto our building sites, who allowed it to happen, and how we make sure it never happens again.

The terms of reference were very broad to ensure that that could happen, and the commission will obviously investigate and examine the nature and extent of corruption or criminal conduct that might have been on the civil construction projects in Victoria. I make the point though that we need to look at the contributing factors and circumstances so that we can make sure this does not happen again, but we also need to give the commission the right tools and powers to have the ability to examine that conduct with anyone who might have been involved in corruption or that serious misconduct and examine the circumstances. That purpose is pretty simple: for the royal commission to find the answers that Victorians absolutely deserve to have.

This brings me to this bill, though. Obviously the royal commission is one thing, but it also needs the tools and resources to do its job. We need to strengthen those tools to ensure that we then can have a strong royal commission that will find the things that we need to. But this bill today does a second thing: it establishes the office of the special prosecutor to work alongside that royal commission. The royal commission will have those powers, as I have said, to compel information, but the special prosecutor is going to be able to work alongside the royal commission. The royal commission can compel evidence, require people to attend hearings and obviously require documents to be produced. It can make investigations and findings, but importantly the royal commission cannot charge or prosecute. It is an investigation body; hence we have the special prosecutor. This is going to build on existing processes. The special prosecutor will work cooperatively with the commission and assist with referring information. That information could be referred to Victoria Police. It could be referred to IBAC or other relevant institutions or Commonwealth bodies. It means if there is evidence that there has been potential wrongdoing, as it emerges there will be someone with that legal expertise and specific responsibility to help make sure that the information is going to go to the right authorities. Importantly, as I have said, that special prosecutor will be independent of government. That independence, I think, is critical. I think that independence is really important to our Victorian communities. They need to make sure that they have confidence in this system. Because we are dealing with allegations of corruption and serious misconduct, Victorians do need to have confidence in that process.

I just want to talk a little bit about the first phase of establishing that special prosecutor. The government has deliberately taken the time to get the model right. Obviously we want to make sure, as we are introducing additional powers and functions of the special prosecutor, it is done carefully in consultation with the royal commission and other relevant bodies. We want to make sure this is sensible legislation, and it is important to get it right. But we also should not be creating an overlapping of powers or undermining any work that other agencies might already have responsibility for. We must make sure that this system actually is going to work together.

Currently a royal commission can compel the production of documents and can require a person to attend a hearing or give evidence, but that information does not always sit neatly just in a document. Sometimes information is someone’s personal knowledge, and sometimes a commission may need a particular piece of information. With this bill, the royal commission will be able to require a person, through written notice, to provide information or a written statement by a specific time and on a specific matter. It sounds like a really small procedural change, but it is not. It actually can make a really significant difference to how effectively and how efficiently a royal commission can operate. Instead of waiting for formal hearings or waiting to establish what a person knows, it can require that written statement beforehand. Obviously that goes to unnecessary delays. These powers are also subject to the same processes, checks and balances that apply to existing compulsory powers under the Inquiries Act 2014. That is ensuring they have the practical tools necessary, as I have said.

Ultimately I think this bill is really about confidence – confidence that public money is being protected and spent properly and confidence that major projects are being delivered with integrity. I think that this is ultimately about trust and trust in our institutions – it is a trust in government and importantly a trust in the people who put themselves forward, like we do in this place, to serve their communities. I think about that, I suppose, in my own role as a member of Parliament. When I am talking to constituents or people have come and reached out to talk to me about things that matter to them, I am very conscious that with the responsibility that comes with that, there needs to be a trust in the process, a trust in your member and a trust that comes with having the privilege of being in government. I strongly think that we can probably do better at explaining to the community about how government works and why politicians are here. I would say that everyone is here to do the best for their communities, but we have a responsibility to do better, because I know that the trust factor in the community with politics is probably at its all-time low.

I just want to put on the record, though, that this is certainly not an attack on the majority of workers that are on our construction sites who do a terrific job. They do a hard day’s work. They build our state, literally, and they put food on their table. It is a great job and a great career for their families, and they do the right thing. I think about some of the projects in the past on the Bellarine. The Big Build has built the Drysdale bypass. Many in the community said that would never happen, but we got on with it. We certainly committed to doing that, and it was delivered a few years ago now. It is really important infrastructure on the Bellarine that makes sure that our community can move around. It absolutely futureproofed our communities across the north of the Bellarine, and it created more than a hundred jobs at the time. We know that these construction sites do create wonderful jobs and well-paid jobs, but we obviously need to ensure that everyone is doing the right thing. If they are not, then there will be a mechanism for accountability.

In conclusion, this establishes an independent special prosecutor to work alongside the commission. It is going to strengthen the commission’s ability to obtain information but also to do that further work if there is someone who has not done the right thing, and there are consequences for doing that. I think, for me, this is what good government looks like. There is accountability, there is action and there is a process, and it is not just about talking about integrity but about structures being in place to make sure that we protect that going forward. We want to rebuild that trust in the community, and this government is absolutely taking action to do that. I commend the bill to the house.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (16:58): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to make a short contribution on this very important piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge the contributions that have been made by members of the government on this side of the house, who are so committed to these matters and making sure that those that do the wrong thing, no matter what work they do right across our great state, need to be punished for criminality. I want to acknowledge the contributions that have been made by members on this side of the house, because I know, speaking to these fantastic members, just how important the matters within this piece of legislation are and I know the journey of the passage of this bill through this house and through the place over there, which we do not have too much to do with. They of course will do their business. I do want to make the observation that the work done to beef up and improve the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission legislation and the work that is contained within this bill go to integrity and go to making sure that those people who do the wrong thing are punished and those people who do the right thing are thanked and acknowledged. With those short comments, I commend this bill to the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.