Tuesday, 3 March 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:46): The community is rightly outraged by the fleecing of $15 billion from communities under their nose for no return to us but a return to organised crime, criminals and those who intimidate, peddle drugs, harass women and degrade our society. The government has shown absolutely no genuine intent to get to the bottom of this. In fact it has done every semantic and evasive measure it could do to delay, distract, and water down any proper investigation into these matters. It is clear the government has no intent. It is as clear as day, because when the Premier paraded a letter saying that it had referred matters to IBAC, trying to invoke the authority of IBAC in that measure, we found that IBAC had already clearly indicated they could not review it. The insincerity is appalling. The Liberals have been very clear about what we will do. We will clean it up. We will target crime bosses. We will create a taskforce to recover the money stolen from us, deliver more powers to IBAC, establish construction enforcement Victoria, stamp out organised crime on government projects and establish, most importantly, a royal commission into CFMEU practices. It is the very least our state deserves.