Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (14:18): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes:

(a) in February 2026, this house called for a royal commission into corruption on Big Build sites, supported by every non-government party, and Labor ignored it;

(b) the Premier twice dismissed a royal commission before reversing his position on becoming Premier;

(c) the Premier served as roads and public transport minister, concedes he may be called as a witness, and is writing the terms for an inquiry into a government he helped lead;

(2)   affirms that a royal commission must:

(a) investigate corruption, criminality and misconduct across all government-funded construction projects since December 2014, not merely Big Build sites or the CFMEU;

(b) examine unions, contractors, subcontractors, labour hire firms, ministerial offices, departments and agencies, including how projects were selected, procured, administered and funded;

(c) determine what current and former premiers, ministers, advisers and senior officials knew, when they knew it and what they did, including early public examination of the Honourable Daniel Andrews, the Honourable Jacinta Allan MP, and the Honourable Ben Carroll MP;

(d) follow public money to organised crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, contractors, political organisations, and unions, including redundancy, training and entitlement funds;

(e) be led by an independent interstate commissioner in consultation with the opposition;

(f) commence public hearings before the election, obtain cabinet records, and test claims of privilege and public interest immunity; and

(3)   calls on the government to adopt these requirements, because a narrow Labor-drafted inquiry into Labor’s conduct would be no reckoning, merely the same old cover-up under new management.

I have put forward the motion in my name today because it is important to talk about what a royal commission actually means. Announcing an inquiry is easy, but the real work lies in the detail behind it. Unfortunately, a royal commission is not a silver bullet. There is no button to press which suddenly delivers truth and accountability on demand. Like so many things, what you get out of a royal commission depends on what you put into it. It is people who produce truth, and they will only do that if they are given the scope, the powers, the time and the permission to go looking for it.

We are not arguing anymore about whether Victoria needs an inquiry. That argument is over, and we won it. In February every non-government party in this house supported a royal commission into corruption on Victorian government construction sites. Labor ignored us. Then Ben Carroll became Premier, and suddenly the royal commission he had twice dismissed as too slow and too expensive became his signature integrity policy. His conversion did not exactly happen on the road to Damascus – it came on the road to the latest disastrous state election polling. Still, as they say, better late than never.

But now comes the part that actually matters. The terms of reference have to be right. The commissioner has to be right, so do the deputy commissioners and counsel assisting. The witnesses have to be the right witnesses. They have to be called at the right time and, wherever possible, be examined in public. If these things are wrong through carelessness or by design, then this state could spend years and millions of dollars on an exercise which tells Victorians nothing they did not already know. The terms of reference are not administrative fine print, the terms of reference are the inquiry. They decide where the commissioner can look, what questions can be asked, what evidence can be pursued and, just as importantly with this Labor government, what is left safely outside the fence. We all know what a failed inquiry looks like because Victoria has lived through one. The Coate inquiry into hotel quarantine sat, took evidence and produced a report, yet the central decision it was established to examine somehow escaped explanation. Nobody could remember. Nobody was responsible. A decision of enormous consequence apparently just happened. We cannot have that again. We cannot spend years listening to ‘I don’t recall’, ‘I wasn’t told’, ‘That wasn’t my responsibility’ and ‘That was a decision for somebody else’. This inquiry has to find answers.

That brings me to the new Premier’s own position. Nobody on this side is complacent about November. Elections are decided by voters. But the reality is that this royal commission may well become the defining legacy of Ben Carroll’s premiership. It may be the only legacy. Royal commissions outlive premiers, and these hearings will continue long after the political circumstances which created this inquiry have changed. The question for the Premier is this: does he want to be remembered as the leader who finally opened the books and established a serious inquiry which followed the evidence wherever it led or as the Premier who established a cynical, expensive political exercise, which Victorians were left paying for and listening to, probably shaking their heads in disbelief long after he left the hot seat and possibly politics entirely. I do not believe anybody enters public life hoping to be remembered for the second outcome, but that is the choice in front of the Premier, and he is making it now in the drafting of these terms.

Mr Carroll has talked endlessly about a fresh start. He stood up on his first day and told Victorians that integrity was not optional. Very well. A fresh start is only a fresh start if you do actually do things differently. If ‘integrity is not optional’ means anything, it has to be in the DNA of this royal commission: in the terms the Premier settles, the commissioner he appoints, the powers the commission receives and the witnesses who get called. That is what this motion asks for. It should be self-evident that we cannot examine the CFMEU as though the union operated in a vacuum. We need to investigate the whole system around those projects: contractors, subcontractors, labour hire firms, consultants, unions, ministerial offices, departments and agencies, and how projects were conceived, selected, procured, administered and funded. I saw a question from the Australian Constructors Association recently which summarises it well. They asked how a small group of union officials acquired the power to dictate which subcontractors a tier 1 builder was obliged to hire. That is not a question about industrial relations, it is a question about government. The state was no innocent bystander here. The state was the client and the paymaster. It owned the projects. Ministers stood in front of the cameras in high-vis jackets and hard hats taking the credit. So they cannot now retreat behind the farcical idea that what happened on those same worksites was somebody else’s business.

This royal commission must ask the questions Victorians themselves would ask – simple questions: who knew what, when did they know it, who told them and what did they do about it? Either ministers knew what was happening on projects they ran and did nothing or they did not know, which is a serious indictment of another kind. This necessarily includes the people at the top. Daniel Andrews should not be beyond examination, nor should Jacinta Allan and nor should Ben Carroll. It also means the commission must obtain cabinet records and test robustly every claim of privilege made against it, because we already hear reporting that briefings warning about infiltration in 2023 were left unsigned in a minister’s office. If deniability was conveniently, deliberately manufactured at the time, then only an inquiry with those powers will ever dig up the truth.

Mr Carroll says he would be happy to appear if called, and we take him at his word, but that creates an obvious difficulty. A man who becomes a witness should not be the one who alone decides which questions may be asked of him. That is why the commissioner has to be genuinely independent and why the opposition should be consulted on the terms, the appointment, the powers and the resourcing, not to give us a veto but in the interests of legitimacy and continuity. Whatever happens on 28 November, Victorians have to know that this commission belongs to Victoria and not the Labor Party. The Premier tells us he is working on the terms with the Chief Commissioner of Police. That is good. He should be working on them with us all as well. And while he is at it, if he wants to be believed, he should publish the budget, because the amount of money a government allocates is probably the most honest statement it ever makes about how much truth it actually wants.

History is instructive here. The Costigan royal commission began with narrow terms aimed at a single union and became one of the most consequential inquiries this country has held, only because those terms were widened again and again over four years. The lesson is not that narrow terms can be repaired later but that we should not need years of amendments to get it right.

As the motion notes, we have to follow the money. Geoffrey Watson has conservatively estimated that the CFMEU overcharged Victorian taxpayers by around $15 billion across a $100 billion program and concluded that much of that money went directly into the hands of criminals and organised crime gangs. Whether the final figure proves to be $15 billion more or less is exactly the point. A royal commission exists to establish the truth, not to confirm anybody’s talking points, including mine. Where did the money go? Who benefited? Were contracts inflated? Were labour hire arrangements manipulated? Did money flow into outlaw motorcycle gangs, into union redundancy training and entitlement funds or into political organisations? Were decent Victorian businesses frozen out because they lacked the right Labor connections? And Victorians are entitled to ask why they should trust this government to answer them when, as we discussed here last sitting week, it quietly commissioned John Merritt to review criminality on Big Build worksites and then sat on the result for more than six months – no media release or press conference or reference on a single government website. That is the ingrained instinct we are dealing with, and it is precisely the instinct these terms of reference must be written to defeat.

Finally, I want to touch on how I think the government still misunderstands the depth of public anger. Victorians do not expect government to be perfect. They know hospitals get busy, that police cannot be everywhere, that roads need repairing, that money is finite. They will forgive a great deal of ordinary failure. But what they will not forgive is the suspicion that their services are worse because somebody else is looking after themselves. There are 405 fewer sworn police than three years ago and 41 stations closed or on reduced hours. More than 68,000 Victorians are waiting for elective surgery. Fewer than two in three code 1 ambulance call-outs arrive within 15 minutes. Teachers have walked off the job, country roads are breaking cars and emergency services fund bills keep landing in letterboxes and keep going up. When a farmer hits another pothole, when a family waits too long for an ambulance, when somebody finds their local station on reduced hours, what genuinely incenses them is the thought that money which should have been working for them went somewhere else – through grey corruption, through soft corruption, and in some cases through straightforward criminal corruption, somebody took what was meant for them and looked after their mates instead.

Failure is forgivable; selfishness and corruption are not. That is why this royal commission is about far more than construction – it is about trust. Does Ben Carroll want to be remembered for restoring trust or putting the final nail in its coffin? Will he be the Premier who opened the books, let the evidence lead where it led and began restoring Victorians’ trust in their own government, or the Premier who established a cynical and expensive political exercise announced to neutralise an election problem, carefully fenced to protect the people who built the system and paid for by the very taxpayers who were fleeced in the first place? I would obviously urge the former. Ditch the Temu royal commission, adopt the requirements of this motion and give the commission the scope, the independence and the courage to lance the boil properly. Do not try to protect the guilty or spin the scandal. Another Labor-drafted inquiry into Labor’s own conduct will be no reckoning at all – it will simply be the same old cover-up under new management. I commend the motion to the house.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (14:33): I am pleased to rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s motion today about the royal commission that Premier Ben Carroll has announced will be established into the construction sector here in Victoria. The new Premier has said quite clearly the first item of business will be to commission the work to start a royal commission into the construction sector. What we have seen since the day that Ben Carroll was elected and sworn in as Premier of this state is the Liberal Party running scared and running away from their commitment to and their support of a royal commission. There is no further evidence we need that the Liberal Party is running away from its support of a royal commission in this state than the terms of this motion and the speech just given by the Leader of the Opposition in this place.

What that demonstrates is that the Liberal Party is not serious about a real royal commission that gets to these issues – what they are interested in is putting their thumb on the scales of justice before it begins. It demonstrates that their ostensible support for a royal commission hitherto was not a stand of principle but a play of politics. Because when they have got, in the form of this Premier, someone coming out and doing the work properly via cabinet processes to establish the terms of reference in letters patent with the commissioner under the processes established in the Inquiries Act 2014, we have seen the Liberal Party scurrying to throw muck and to try and predetermine the outcomes of an independent process, not only in violation of the spirit in which this royal commission is being established but also undermining the law in Victoria and undermining the provisions that exist in the Inquiries Act that set out how royal commissions themselves should be established. They do not want a proper inquiry. They want to put their thumbs on the scale of justice and have a predetermined outcome. That is not a royal commission, that is a kangaroo court, and it is not what we want here in the state of Victoria.

If you are serious about dealing with the issues that exist in the construction sector, if you are interested in understanding and exposing some of the side deals and side deeds that may have been entered into by governments about construction projects in the state of Victoria, the terms of this motion demonstrate quite clearly just how blatantly political and antithetical to a genuine inquiry you can get, because this motion on its very terms seeks to limit what the royal commission can investigate. It seeks to stop the royal commission looking at the procurement and funding of large-scale construction projects here in the state of Victoria in the last 15 years. We know therefore – because they have written it in plain English in black and white on the notice paper – that the Liberal Party must have something to hide.

They must be scared of what happened in the term of the last Liberal government, because they want to exclude this royal commission from any examination of any actions of anyone who was involved in any of the construction deals in the last Liberal government, and that, I think, is the best example that we have got as to why this motion and their support for a royal commission is not genuine at all but is just another cheap political stunt. So when Mrs McArthur gets up and exhorts that we need to look at what a royal commission actually means and that what you get out depends on what you put in and then proposes a motion that seeks to limit the royal commission’s scope and terms of reference and what it is able to look into, you can see that they are not genuine at all and they do not care about getting to the truth about what has happened in construction projects in Victoria over the last 15 years. All they are interested in is a political hit job. They are discredited, and they should be disregarded about what they have got to say.

What we are doing and what this Premier is doing is setting up a royal commission to examine these issues and going and drafting through proper cabinet processes – not by press releases on a weekend – the exact scope of those letters patent and terms of reference. That is taking regard of the provisions of the Inquiries Act, particularly section 12 of the Inquiries Act, which governs how a royal commission works here in the state of Victoria, which says quite clearly on its face in very plain English that we need to enable the royal commission to conduct its inquiry in a manner that it thinks is appropriate, not predetermine the outcome and not tell them who they have got to go and investigate, which is what Mrs McArthur and the Liberal Party want to do. They want to tell the royal commissioner what to look at and when to look at it, and that is an absolute disgrace and an absolute undermining of the principles of the rule of law that we have here in the state of Victoria and discredits anything that the Liberal Party have got to say about a proper inquiry using the significant powers and resources of a royal commission, because they do not actually want to get to the truth. They actually do not want to understand what is going on. They just want a political witch-hunt. They just want a kangaroo court.

I do not think the people of Victoria want a partisan inquiry at the behest of the Liberal Party. They want an independent royal commission led by an eminent jurist that is going to examine these issues in thorough detail and get to the truth of the matter. What we see before us today is a motion that seeks to limit that royal commission, that seeks to direct the royal commissioner in what they should be looking at and that seeks to predetermine outcomes. They cannot seriously stand up as the Liberal Party, as the alternative government of this state, and claim any credibility on integrity matters when they are seeking to predetermine the outcomes of this inquiry.

They used to support a royal commission. They got a Premier who is setting one up and all of a sudden they are running miles away from a proper investigation. Ms Crozier can wave her comic book around all day. What this government is doing is setting up that royal commission properly, giving due consideration to its terms of reference, not fettering what it can look at, not determining that it is not something. They might have something to hide over there. They might know something about what happened prior to December 2014. They might know what happened in the dying days of the Napthine government and may be unwilling to see it brought out into the public domain. We do not know, because what their motion today tells us is that what they want to do is put their thumbs on the scales of justice and predetermine the outcome of a royal commission that this Premier has said that we are having and that this state has said that it wants.

The Liberal Party cannot be trusted to do this properly. The Liberal Party have form when it comes to setting up sham royal commissions for political purposes. Their friends in Canberra have done it time and time again. If you want to have a proper examination of all of the issues that have occurred in the construction sector in the state of Victoria over the last 15 years, the only way you are going to get there is through the work initiated by the Premier Ben Carroll. He is doing the work now. The cabinet is doing the work now. This motion is a political stunt.

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (14:43): I rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s motion, and the Greens will not be supporting this motion today. As Mrs McArthur noted, the Greens supported the motion in February calling for a royal commission, not because we thought it was the best possible course of action to deal with corruption allegations but because it was the only adequate one that seemed likely to get some legs any time soon. The Greens have always maintained that the best way to get to the bottom of these corruption allegations is reforming IBAC so that they have the powers to investigate these matters properly. This means not just follow-the-money powers and public hearings, but also expanding the jurisdiction of IBAC so it can investigate corruption that does not meet the current ridiculously high threshold of conduct involving alleged serious indictable crimes or common-law offending like bribery or misconduct in office. IBAC, if appropriately armed, would effectively function like a standing royal commission, but it would be far cheaper and able to investigate all instances of corruption, not just the issue of the Big Build. This Labor government has generated plenty of potential work for them, and no doubt future governments will continue to do so.

Let us remember that Labor voted against multiple bills to strengthen IBAC over this term, and the Liberals, despite their big talk on integrity, voted against expanding the definition of ‘corruption’ and have weasel-worded their way out of committing to doing so by saying that if elected they will get a little bit more advice about this. Because when it comes to integrity, the Liberals are not any better than Labor. All we are seeing from them right now with this motion is political opportunism. Just like Labor, they will say anything to get into power. The motion today is just another example of that. The whole point of a royal commission is that it is independent. It is not for politicians to give it a wish list of witnesses or try to dictate terms that suit that party’s own agenda. As has been pointed out, the terms of reference are so clearly designed to suit the Liberals’ agenda and create parameters that prevent investigation of anything former Liberal governments might have done or any decisions that they might have made from the terms of reference. If the Liberals want a political process, there are plenty of other options, but it is not a royal commission. Right now public trust in our institutions, including Parliament, is at rock bottom. Ensuring that a royal commission has genuine independence and is not just a field for political pointscoring is key to ensuring public confidence in the process. Where we agree with Mrs McArthur is that it is critically important that we get this inquiry right – but that we get it right by keeping the politics out of it.

The scale of the alleged corruption is staggering, and I think most people in this place, if they have been doing their job and getting out there and talking to people in the community, will know that the public are absolutely appalled by it. Victorians are rightly feeling very angry. They are barely getting by day to day, trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. They are trying to get their kids the things they need for school. They are trying to figure out how to pay for a doctor’s or a dental appointment. Then they hear that $15 billion – and that is a conservative estimate – of their taxpayer funds has been siphoned off into organised crime. But it is not just about the loss of money. It is not just the $15 billion going into the hands of organised criminals. It is the complete lack of acknowledgement or acceptance of responsibility from the Labor government overseeing these projects and overseeing this funding, despite receiving multiple warnings over the years that this was occurring. It is seeing a Labor government that instead says anything to scramble to stay in power, rather than just getting on with it and doing the right thing. I warned in April, when we were having another debate about this issue – when the government arrogantly refused to even consider in the Assembly a bill to strengthen IBAC that was passed by this chamber – that the Labor government’s lack of accountability would eventually catch up with them. And it looks like it might be starting to.

We now have a new Premier, who has very early on in their premiership declared that integrity is no longer optional for this government. Top work – I am very pleased to hear that. At least in saying that he has acknowledged what every Victorian already knew: that integrity was entirely optional and, as it turns out, probably not the preferred option under previous premiers. I am not quite sure what Premier Carroll was doing when he was a senior minister or Deputy Premier during the optional integrity period, but he is saying things will change. He is saying a lot of things. The Premier has said there will be a royal commission, which I think has been broadly welcomed. He has also said that at some stage we might see IBAC strengthened. Terrific. We stand ready to pass legislation tomorrow. Bring it on. Everyone in this chamber I think has demonstrated a willingness to pass legislation to strengthen IBAC. But do you know what? I am not going to hold my breath. The thing is he is saying a lot of the right things, but it is still just a lot of talk, not action – the kind of talk that has a remarkable resonance with Victorian Labor’s optional integrity era.

Mr Batchelor said the Liberals are not to be trusted to do this investigation properly, and I agree with that. But I also do not believe that Labor are any better. Victorians deserve a government that is genuine about tackling corruption and strengthening integrity. From what we have seen this term, including what we have seen today here with this motion, they clearly cannot rely on Labor or the coalition to deliver that.

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:49): I rise to speak to Mrs McArthur’s motion. It got rather heated back there with the extraordinary assertions made by Mr Batchelor. But I want to congratulate Mrs McArthur for bringing this to the house, because this is an important issue. In fact it is the number one issue that Victorians are really concerned about – the corruption and level of waste and what has been going on under the guise of Ben Carroll or Jacinta Allan or Daniel Andrews before her in this term of Parliament – because as we have seen, the corruption is rife. A fish rots from its head. The Premier was the Deputy Premier under Jacinta Allan, and she continually turned a blind eye to the CFMEU corruption. It was the Liberals who first said that a royal commission needed to be undertaken into the corruption. That was first announced in July of 2024, and at that time we were very concerned about the illegal and thuggish behaviour that had been allowed to occur. Since that time multiple news articles have got to the extent of understanding what has gone on with the CFMEU.

I want to go to some of the comments, but before I do that, I just want to pick up on the Greens being holier than thou. They have been funded by the CFMEU in their election endeavours. That is on the record – $60,000 back in 2010. I do not know that they can be preaching to anyone in this place about integrity when they have taken donations from the CFMEU.

On the CFMEU, and I want to speak about the area we know, in the Big Build, but it has also been exposed in the building of hospitals. Stephen King said he was improperly pushed by the government to cave into the construction union’s demands to sack a plastering firm. As he said in an article back on 14 July 2026:

The pressure came down to me from the government, and I was told it wanted the subcontractor gone. When I asked about it, I was told the CFMEU was putting pressure on the government and the CFMEU was meeting the government regularly.

That is the extent of the dirty deals that were done under this administration. It does not matter who is leading it, whether it is Daniel Andrews or Jacinta Allan or Ben Carroll, because he was deputy and he stood beside her. Just like Mr Batchelor, who stood in this house and did not back a royal commission, all of you were saying a royal commission was not needed, because that was the then Premier Jacinta Allan’s line: ‘We don’t need a royal commission.’ Mr Batchelor said:

The appropriate body to deal with allegations of criminal activity in the state of Victoria is Victoria Police. No other body, whether it be the standing royal commission, in the form of IBAC, that we have in this state or another royal commission-like process, is going to – because of the way that those processes work – or is empowered with the same prosecutorial vehicles to bring criminal charges and to arrest people.

We have got to get through to the absolute issues around what happened and whether prosecutions need to be made given what is found through the royal commission process. The government does not want that, because the findings will be damning and they will be extensive and deep. That is because the rot has been going on for far too long, for 12 years. And the ridiculous deflections by Mr Batchelor and others on integrity – spare me. How you can even think to lecture this side when you have been overseeing the biggest corruption scandal in the country’s history let alone the state’s history.

And look where we are with the dirty deals, whether it is the CFMEU or the United Firefighters Union. While I am on that, Tony Bates, who has run a mile, who was exposed recently by Operation Richmond, was the government head of integrity and did the backroom deals with the UFU. That is how Labor rolls. It does not matter if it is the UFU or the CFMEU, they do backroom dirty deals, just as Stephen King said about what happened with hospital builds and the Victorian Health Building Authority. This is a disgrace; it is absolutely a disgrace. Stephen King is quoted in this article, and he has decades of experience in managing major government projects. People like that should be called before a royal commission, but so should those decision-makers – like former leaders, like Daniel Andrews, like Jacinta Allan, like the Deputy Premier. I think that we have every right to point out to the Victorian public who we think should come before the royal commission so that Victorians can see what has gone on. It should not be hidden behind closed doors like we saw through the IBAC process with Operation Richmond; it should be a royal commission to expose it. We do not want a cover-up sham process like the Coate inquiry – absolutely not. I know that Jennifer Coate did her best, because I spoke to her, but the terms of reference given by the government and the former Premier and everybody else that was involved and called before that inquiry saying ‘I can’t recall’ and ‘I can’t remember’ were a farce. It was a disgrace. It was a betrayal of the Victorian people.

That is why we have no faith in the government and the deputy – he is not the Deputy Premier now. He has been elevated because the Premier got the boot. She has gone, never to be seen. She will not come back here. She will never come back to the Parliament. Rumour is she is going to resign. I mean, seriously, she cannot even face the music after everything and the destruction from the decisions under her watch, under Ben Carroll’s watch and under Daniel Andrews’s watch. It does not matter who they are. It is the same corrupt, desperate government. They have just got a different name for their leader. Victorians can see through it. Believe you me, they can see through it. I am out there knocking on doors, and they are saying, ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s nobody. He’s as weak as water.’

I want to go back to why this royal commission is important – the level of corruption and the depth of corruption. Geoffrey Watson’s findings speak about what he heard from the hearings on the issues and his understanding of what has gone on. His report really goes to the infiltration of the sites. We were hearing this. I was hearing this through COVID. People were reaching out to me saying, ‘You’ve got no idea what is going on on some of these sites.’ I spoke to journalists, but they were powerless. People were intimidated and terrified about going to the police. Well, thank God some people have stood up and shown what has gone on: the absolute infiltration and the standover tactics by these criminals, these thugs and these bikies; the appalling abuse; the sexual exploitation; the drug taking; and the drug dealing. That all happened in this state: $15 billion and more. ‘No,’ Jacinta Allan said, ‘there’s nothing to see here.’ Every one of you said, ‘Run off to the police.’ They said, ‘We don’t have the powers.’ IBAC said, ‘We don’t have the powers.’

There is much to do in this state to clean up the mess that Labor has put this state in. It will take decades to unravel. It will take decades to pay off the appalling debt that has ramped up because of the ongoing corruption and abuse of taxpayer money. This motion goes to the point about what this house said needed to be done. The government voted against it. Let us not forget what happened. They did not support what was required. All of a sudden the polls are going south. The Premier gets knifed. A new boy comes in and takes over: ‘Oh, it’s all hunky dory, Victorians. It’s under control. I hear you, I listen to you and I’m going to fix it.’ No, you are not. It is just the same desperate, corrupt government with a new leader, a new Premier who stood by Jacinta Allan as her deputy and admitted himself that she would make a phone call on the Sunday night and he would just roll over and do whatever she wanted him to do in the cabinet the next day. My God, he thinks that he can get up there and lecture Victorians about integrity – well, no.

We need to fix this, and we need a proper royal commission. I think Victorians understand. They will have no faith in this government writing the terms of reference and having another cover-up. We have reached out and said, ‘Bring us in so you understand what you need to do.’ That has all been rejected – just like the Coate inquiry and just like COVID. That is what the government did. It shut the opposition down. It shut us out, saying, ‘They are irrelevant.’ That is their modus operandi. Well, not anymore; Victorians have woken up to this corrupt, desperate government that has put so much pain and destruction on so many Victorians, and I say – (Time expired)

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (15:00): I want to make something clear right from the outset. The question before us is not whether there should be a royal commission into the construction sector; there will be one. The first action of Premier Ben Carroll was to announce that his government would establish a royal commission into the construction sector. The Premier has been clear: integrity will be at the centre of the government he leads. Where workers or taxpayers have been let down, we need to know how, and where reform is necessary, we need the courage to deliver it. That is precisely why a royal commission is being established.

A royal commission is the most serious form of public inquiry available to a government. It is not a press conference and it is not a social media post, and it certainly should not be treated as a political plaything. A royal commission requires careful legal work, rigorous terms of reference and above all a commissioner whose independence, experience and standing are beyond question. That distinction is at the heart of why this motion should be opposed. The government wants a royal commission capable of following the evidence wherever it leads. Those opposite appear to want a royal commission that follows their political script.

Before a commissioner has even been appointed, before evidence has been gathered and before a single witness has been heard, the opposition apparently already knows who should appear, when they should appear and where the inquiry should look. That is not how an independent inquiry operates. You cannot demand an independent royal commission and simultaneously try to dictate its work. You cannot say that you respect the judicial process while publishing lists of people you want hauled before it. Utter politicisation is not appropriate. You cannot claim to be searching for the truth when you appear to have already decided what that truth should be. A genuinely independent commissioner must be able to determine which witnesses are relevant, what evidence needs to be gathered first and what should be heard publicly. They also determine how the commission should interact with ongoing criminal and regulatory investigations. Those are serious decisions with serious consequences.

There is also a very important issue of procedural fairness here. People are entitled to procedural fairness regardless of whether we agree with them politically, whether we like them or not, no matter their politics. That principle cannot be discarded simply because there might be a short-term political advantage in doing so. That is not independence.

The royal commission established by this government will follow the evidence; it will definitely not follow the opposition’s media plan. Premier Carroll made the decision to establish this inquiry because it is in the public interest to get to the truth. The Premier has also made it absolutely clear that he will co-operate with the royal commission, including appearing before it if called. There will be no special treatment. Those opposite argue that because the Premier could potentially be called he should somehow have no role in the government establishing the inquiry. That argument simply does not withstand scrutiny. By that logic no government could establish a royal commission examining events that occurred during its period in office. The solution is not to hand control of a royal commission to the Liberal Party, as this motion suggests. The solution is strong terms of reference, a proper and transparent establishment process, and a fiercely independent commissioner.

We also need to remember that this inquiry will not operate in isolation. There are a number of other initiatives that have also been announced by the Premier, including the strengthening of IBAC. The construction division of the CFMEU is already under Commonwealth administration. There are Commonwealth regulators and enforcement processes operating in this space, and in Victoria agencies already have responsibilities relating to workplace safety, labour hire, procurement, integrity and criminal conduct. The Commonwealth-appointed administrator has asked Victoria to consult so that our respective efforts strengthen each other rather than overlap. That is sensible. We should ensure information can be shared appropriately, and we should avoid unnecessary duplication. Critically, we must ensure that one process does not inadvertently compromise another live investigation.

Those opposite seem to confuse noise with action, and I am much more interested in results. Because if we are serious about reforming the construction sector, we need to look beyond tomorrow’s headline. How do we better protect our worker who speaks up about intimidation? How do we prevent exploitation through sham contracting and complicated layers of subcontracting? How do we ensure labour hire arrangements are properly regulated? How do we ensure that workers are protected from wage theft? How do we change workplace cultures in which unacceptable conduct has been allowed to take hold? How do we ensure public money is protected?

I also find it worth noting that when this government established the Labour Hire Authority to regulate the labour hire industry and protect vulnerable workers, those opposite voted against it. So I find some of the sudden enthusiasm from the opposition for workplace integrity a little difficult to reconcile with their voting record. Integrity is not something you discover when there is a political opportunity. It requires strong institutions, strong laws and the willingness to examine systems as well as individuals. This is about protecting workers and protecting taxpayers. It is about protecting the integrity of an industry that employs thousands of hardworking Victorians and builds the infrastructure our state depends on. Those workers should not have their entire industry defined by allegations against individuals or organisations. They deserve an inquiry that is serious enough to distinguish allegation from evidence and evidence from fact, and Victorians deserve recommendations capable of delivering lasting reform.

The Carroll Labor government will establish a strong and independent royal commission. It will work alongside law enforcement, regulators and integrity agencies. It will have the ability to investigate corruption and criminality and, importantly, the circumstances and systems that allowed misconduct to occur. It will help us protect workers, protect public money and restore confidence in Victoria’s construction sector. What it will not be is a publicly funded political witch-hunt directed by the Liberal Party. This issue is far too serious for that. I reject this politically motivated motion, and I support a proper independent establishment of a royal commission.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:10): Victorians are sick to death of organised crime and corruption in this state. They are absolutely sick to death of it. They see evidence of it every day with new firebombing attacks and with what is being reported about construction sites – which is just the tip of the iceberg I think – and they see a government that has overseen this and they see an opposition which has failed to hold the government to account on this. Victorians are mad at both the major parties for what has happened here. While Victorians are being bled dry through taxes, they see their money wasted through corruption, and yet basic services – basic functions of the state – like fixing the roads and making sure that we have enough police to stop criminals on the street fall by the wayside.

To the government’s credit, the new Premier has finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, to establish a royal commission. This is a good thing. As Mr Batchelor pointed out, it needs to be done in accordance with the Inquiries Act 2014. No-one has seen the terms of reference yet, so I will reserve my judgement for when they are published. I would very much like to see them. I have said, through an adjournment question in this place, some things about the terms of reference that I would like to see. I am very disappointed today to see this motion by the Liberal Party trying to narrow the scope of the royal commission. They are trying to narrow it. They are claiming that they want to see integrity and they want to see corruption and organised crime unmasked, yet they want to limit the royal commission to the days after they lost government in Victoria.

Anyone that has been looking at what is happening with organised crime in Victoria in the corruption sector would know that the origin story for everything that is happening now is the desal plant in Wonthaggi. It was reported at the time there were bikies there. There were cranes that were not being used or were underused. There was drug dealing. In fact in December last year there was a report in the local papers that spoke about the ongoing problems with meth addiction caused by the desal plant. Some locals were wanting to oppose extensions of and further investment in the desal plant because they were worried about more drugs coming into town. They have still got that memory after all these years, and that happened in 2012 under a Liberal government. I do not know what they knew about it. I do not know what they did to stop it. Maybe they did some great things; I do not know. But limiting this royal commission to only look at things that have happened in this time whilst ignoring what is essentially the origin story of the situation that we are in is totally wrong. This will be one of the key things that I will be looking at when these terms of reference are released. It has to go back and look at the desal plant, because it was the same people, the same organised crime groups and the same types of corruption. We talk now about drugs and strippers and no-show jobs and stuff as if it is something new. It has been happening for a very long time. It is nothing new at all – same people, same gangs, same modus operandi – and yet the Liberal Party want to exclude that from scrutiny. That is irresponsible, that is wrong, and we should not be doing that.

I also take issue with what the Liberal Party have been doing in trying to name witnesses that they think should appear. Let us hope that we get a commissioner of high integrity that is intelligent enough to see what has happened in Victoria and what is necessary to do to uncover this and get to the bottom of everything. I would hope that they are more than capable of identifying witnesses and who should be called to find out what is going on. Maybe there are some people that were in the Liberal government at the time that need to answer some questions about what was going on in Wonthaggi, because there were obviously some bad things going on there. The locals are still suffering from what happened. They are still suffering the scourge of ice addiction in that town all these years later and they are still scarred from it. The opposition may say that project was all kicked off by the Labor Party, but much of that construction happened under the Liberal Party, under the Liberal government.

One of the things that happened under the Liberal government, and it was related to the desal plant, was the pipelines in Clyde North. I have lots of questions about that. I have had constituents approach me with lots of questions about the types of construction that were done with these pipelines – things like why they are so shallow in many areas that you cannot drive cars over them. It seems like a crazy design issue. I do not know why they were done like that. Was there something untoward going on? I do not know.

Ms Crozier raised the Greens and was talking about how the Greens took some donation from the CFMEU in the past. Apparently that happened in 2010 in the ACT or something. That would have been outside the terms of reference. So something untoward did happen, but under the Liberal Party’s terms of reference that would be totally fine and not need to be looked at, according to the Liberal Party. This is wrong, what they are doing here.

The royal commission absolutely needs to look at things that happened before December 2014. That will be a key metric on which I will be judging the government’s terms of reference when they finally publish them. I hope that the Premier makes the right decision and does go back further than December 2014. Without that we cannot discover the history of the state that we are in, because it was happening back then and it is happening now. We need to get to the bottom of how this started in the first place.

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (15:16): I rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s excellent motion, and I thank her for leading the debate on this important issue that has shocked the state more than any other Labor corruption scandal in history. If there is one thing that we have learned about this Premier, it is that he cannot be trusted. He has said countless times that a royal commission into union corruption is not necessary. Remember? He said it would cost too much and take too long and that they were putting in the action required – until the political pressure became all too great and he rolled the former Premier and said he would call one. He lied to his own daughter about his support for the former Premier.

This Premier cannot be trusted on a royal commission, which we still have not seen terms of reference for. It was his first thing. He said his first thing would be to call a royal commission. Well, he has not. Calling a royal commission means signing and calling a royal commission with terms of reference, with letters patent to establish it. He is supposedly getting his secretary to write terms of reference and brief him on terms of reference. We still have not seen them. What I believe is that this Premier does not want public hearings to be occurring before the November election, so he is dragging it out as long as possible in order to avoid any hearings disparaging what this Andrews–Allan–Carroll government has been up to.

I do enjoy these Wednesday debates. There have been many of them. I could not help but hear Mr Batchelor wax lyrical about how Labor is standing firm and Labor is the only one with integrity and it is going to have integrity in moving a royal commission. It was a previous Wednesday – and there have been lots of debates about this topic – but I want to quote Mr Batchelor from 18 March this year. He said:

The appropriate body to deal with allegations of criminal activity in the state of Victoria is Victoria Police. No other body, whether it be the standing royal commission, in the form of IBAC, that we have in this state or another royal commission-like process, is going to – because of the way that those processes work – or is empowered with the same prosecutorial vehicles to bring criminal charges and to arrest people. I think that if you are serious about stopping criminal behaviour on construction sites, you call the cops, because what the police can do is arrest people and what the police can do is charge people.

We have a member waxing lyrical about the need for a royal commission now, who in March was viciously arguing against a royal commission. Spare me on the integrity of those opposite in dismissing a royal commission. In particular, Mr Batchelor at the same time as he was dismissing a royal commission was saying, ‘Well, we need to go to Victoria Police. It should be referred to Victoria Police.’ But we know that the police at the same time, as far back as the start of the year and last year, were asking former Premier Jacinta Allan for more powers, because they stated publicly they did not have the powers to deal with the broadscale corruption going on on construction sites. So spare me the lectures from the other side about integrity over a royal commission, when they fought to the bitter end to prop up Jacinta Allan to save themselves from having a royal commission.

Now they have managed to look her in the eye and then roll her and propose a royal commission. But we still have not seen the terms of reference, which means they are trying to avoid a royal commission and its hearings being up and running before the election because they are worried what people might say. They are worried that the Victorian people will finally figure out the corruption that has gone on under this government. I mean, $15 billion was siphoned off construction sites through the CFMEU to criminals, strippers and bikies. It is an absolute disgrace. At the same time, why did they need to increase taxes and need to massively increase land taxes? Countless people I have spoken to in the northern suburbs are not only paying their own mortgage but paying the mortgage on their small business, and they have been whacked with sometimes four or five times the amount of land tax, crushing their businesses into the ground, only for them to see that people like those opposite have been defending against having a royal commission into $15 billion of taxpayer money being siphoned off to strippers, to bikies and to the criminal underworld. There is a massive amount of blowouts under this government on infrastructure projects – $50 billion worth – and a huge waste of $15 billion being siphoned off. It is an outrage.

At the same time, they are cutting community hospitals like Eltham. At the same time, they are not being able to staff community hospitals like Craigieburn. At the same time, they are shutting down police station counters all across the state. Forty police stations have reduced operating hours or have been shut completely. Yet this government has the gall to say, ‘Oh, no, we’re doing a royal commission now.’ They are only doing a royal commission to save their own political skin because of what was leaked out there. They are all out there doorknocking, and people know a crook when they see one. For hours and hours those opposite have spent time in here defending the corrupt practices on construction sites, making excuses for it and saying, ‘Refer it to the police,’ when the police do not have the powers.

How about the former Premier? She said, ‘Oh, I wrote to IBAC after these allegations aired in July 2024,’ only to never release the fact that IBAC wrote to her six weeks later saying they did not have the powers to do anything about it. What did the former Premier do with that information? She kept it quiet from all of her colleagues, from the media and from the Victorian people. You would think getting a letter like that as Premier would prompt you to say, ‘Okay, what can we do about this? We can make those changes. We can bring them into the Parliament.’ She could have even done the year-and-a-half review, which she announced much later on and wanted to push back to after the election, and had it in place before the election. Well, of course she would not want that. Neither would the rest of them that were involved.

As I said, this Premier cannot be trusted. We all recall – I believe it was somewhere in Carlton – the current Premier Ben Carroll with the then Treasurer Tim Pallas attending a CFMEU-hosted fundraiser. And who was there? John Setka. The union reported in the media that those members, Mr Carroll and Mr Pallas, guaranteed decades of a pipeline of work on infrastructure for their members. What we all know is that it was really decades of crookedness and dodgy deals under this government to expand the remit of the CFMEU, which meant that they could get bikies straight out of prison onto construction sites as health and safety reps. That is what actually happened because of the philosophy that ‘Everyone’s got to eat’. Do you know whose money that is? It is taxpayers money that has been ripped out of all sorts of government services, ripped out of roads funding in our state and ripped out of community hospitals in our state and gone to strippers and to bikies, to give people – criminal bikies – straight out of prison jobs of over $250,000 a year on taxpayer-funded construction sites. It is an absolute disgrace, and I commend Mrs McArthur’s motion to the house.

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (15:26): The Liberals are being true to form again, and as Victorians know, they are unable to do anything constructive or positive with their time in this place. Even now, when Premier Carroll has stood up and announced a royal commission, they are unable to be supportive or to be productive. We heard Mr Limbrick. Mr Limbrick stood over there and called out the Liberals. We know the Liberals have no values. They have nothing that brings them together to make the lives of Victorians better. We know the Liberals’ ideologies are driven by driving down workers’ pay and conditions – lower wages.

In this motion they have brought here today the politics shows out. They do not want the best possible independent inquiry. They want it to suit their internal politics. They are not worried about getting the most relevant witnesses. They are not worried about getting those relevant witnesses to appear in the best possible order to ensure that evidence can be gathered appropriately and to ensure that criminal investigations that are occurring in parallel can run their process. For the Liberals it is all political, and in the time in the debate we have heard so far there has been nothing constructive put forward. It has been mudslinging, it has been attacking language, not dealing with the substance of the issue, and it just fits with the Liberal Party that voters know.

With institutions – whether they be our major corporations, whether they be our sports clubs, whether they be our banks or indeed whether they be our unions – where there are people, we have to be ever vigilant. We have to be ever vigilant to weed out any corruption. It is critically important for our society that we have faith that the operation and processes of our institutions are free from corruption. Indeed, unions are too important to have corruption in them because hundreds of thousands – millions – of members rely on their unions to represent them and to ensure the pay that they take home to their families and spend in their communities. That keeps our economy strong, something that this side believes in – in workforces being paid well and in workforces, homes and families having enough money to have the highest possible quality of life they can but also in being able to make a contribution to the local economies that they live in, the local high streets, the local small businesses and the strip shops. It is important that workers take home decent pay, so we need strong unions. Like I said before, no matter which of the institutions that are critically important to our society, they all need to be strong.

A royal commission is the most serious form of public inquiry available to the government. Despite the fact that it is being called, those opposite continue to stay here and play politics. Despite the fact a royal commission is being set in place to uncover the truth and the causes of alleged misconduct and alleged criminal activity and to deliver lasting reforms, those opposite continue with their stunts. They have already decided in their minds who should be called without a judicial officer, the order in which they should appear and the conclusions they want Victorians to reach before a commissioner has even been appointed. It is not in the interests of an independent process. If those opposite had their way, the outcomes would be as hopeless as the Cole commission. That is not integrity, that is a simply a sham. They have no intent of the independence of the royal commission and no intent for the commissioner to determine, as I said before, witnesses that are relevant, the order in which they should be called, which matters should be heard publicly and how parallel criminal investigations should be protected. We need to enable the royal commission to follow evidence and follow its due process. As I said before, the Liberals are well known to be all about themselves and not about the best outcomes for Victorians.

The government will establish a serious, independent and effective royal commission. We will appoint a commissioner with the experience, authority and independence required to conduct this inquiry without fear or favour. We will develop terms of reference that go to the heart of the problems within the construction sector. We will not compromise investigations or duplicate work simply to meet an artificial political timetable imposed by the opposition. We will not prescribe findings before evidence is heard, and the government will give Victorians confidence that this royal commission is independent, methodical and capable of producing real reform.

Premier Carroll’s first act as Premier was to call a royal commission into the construction sector. The Premier has also made it clear that he will cooperate with the royal commission, including appearing if called – no special treatment. The Liberals are saying that the Premier cannot call the royal commission. By that logic, no government could ever establish a royal commission examining matters that occurred during its time in office. Yet again, without thinking – and we see it regularly, like the press release they did the other day where Ms Crozier spoke – they have tripped over their own feet, because they have not put the time and the effort and the consideration into their announcements to get things right.

The answer is not to hand control of the inquiry to the Liberal Party. The answer is strong terms of reference, transparent establishment processes and a fiercely independent commissioner. That is exactly what the Carroll Labor government will deliver. We will consult with Commonwealth and other integrity agencies, and we will ensure relevant information can be shared and that separate bodies are not unintentionally compromising each other’s work. This is about getting results. Nothing the opposition has presented goes to the root of the problem. Where is their serious plan to address the structures that allow misconduct to take hold? Where is their interest to prevent sham contracting and exploitation through layers of subcontractors? Where is their interest in strengthening labour hire regulation? They voted against the establishment of the Labour Hire Authority, so we can only assume they do not care about regulating this industry properly and fairly. Where is their interest in stopping wage theft? Where is their interest in changing the culture of the industry? Where is their interest in preventing corruption? There is no interest.

The government’s terms of reference will be designed around conduct systems, powers and accountability. For decades voters have seen time and time again through successive Liberal leaders and through the Liberal Party’s actions that they do not have working people’s interests at their heart. Their student politics, the worship of Reagan and Thatcherism when they were all at university, play out in the way they approach their politics. I am very, very proud to come from a party that through collective values works things up to improve the quality of people’s lives, whether it is education, whether it is health care, our housing or our public transport. I oppose this motion. I have run out of time, so I will leave my contribution there.

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:36): I also rise today to speak to the motion of my colleague and leader in the upper house Mrs McArthur. I congratulate her on a very thorough and forward-thinking motion. I think it is important, in light of what has just been said in this chamber, after listening to some of the drivel that has been going on, that I go through some of the words in the motion. Bev McArthur has moved:

That this house:

(1)   notes

(a) in February 2026, this house called for a royal commission into corruption on Big Build sites, supported by every non-government party, and Labor ignored it …

That is a very serious thing for Labor to ignore, and I think that it speaks volumes when we consider that every single other MP, representing a variety of parties, was prepared to stand up and go, ‘This needs to happen.’ Everybody knows that there is a problem here, that our Big Build costs have been super-inflated. You do not have to go very far on the ground to hear the stories out there in the community of how cost blowouts take place and what takes place on the Big Build sites to inflate those costs. It is quite common knowledge among people, and they talk about it quite freely behind closed doors.

I have a number of stories that I have heard, a number of stories that I am sure many colleagues in this place have heard, of calls to give quotes and then being told by unions that they will be taking this percentage of the bill that they will never see from that quote. Why the CFMEU thinks that it is so special that somehow it and the cartels that it seems to be connected to can go in and use the hard-earned money of taxpayers just beggars belief. We have so many families in my region who are struggling to pay their bills. I think this is what makes Victorians so angry: they are prepared to do the hard yards to get the state back on track, but when they discover that while they are struggling to pay their bills and they are struggling to put the petrol in their car and they are struggling to pay whatever fees they have for their children, that money that they are paying in taxes is going into the pockets of cartel criminals through unions like the CFMEU through the Big Build. That is what absolutely ticks off Victorians, because they work hard for their money and they are struggling on every level. It is simply not acceptable. Let us take (1)(b):

the Premier twice dismissed a royal commission before reversing his position on becoming Premier …

So isn’t that interesting? We have this new Premier Mr Carroll, and he had the opportunity to say yes to a royal commission, but he did not. He stood there next to the Premier and he did nothing. Suddenly, ‘Oh, we might lose the election,’ so now we are going to go through some sort of process that they can control so they can tick the box and say, ‘Don’t worry, we had a royal commission.’ I am sure they will find a head to roll somewhere, and then they will say ‘Problem solved’. But the reality is it will not be solved, because it is Labor investigating Labor. I do not think so. The motion states:

(c) the Premier served as roads and public transport minister, concedes he may be called as a witness, and is writing the terms for an inquiry into a government he helped lead …

I do not know, but I think that if we were to put this to the pub test everybody would be able to see that that is a conflict of interest. It goes on:

(2)   affirms that a royal commission must:

(a) investigate corruption, criminality and misconduct across all government-funded construction projects since December 2014, not merely Big Build sites or the CFMEU …

I think that one is fairly self-explanatory, because we know that corruption and criminality and misconduct were taking place on all sorts of construction sites and projects well before this just kind of blew up with what we have been calling the Big Build. Now let us think about:

(b) examine unions, contractors, subcontractors, labour hire firms, ministerial offices, departments and agencies, including how projects were selected, procured, administered and funded …

I guess the point here is why should only a couple of heads roll when there is a whole bunch of people who are involved in this? Why should a couple of people have to take the load and go to prison when there are a ton of people who should be investigated? Further:

(c) determine what current and former premiers, ministers, advisers and senior officials knew, when they knew it and what they did, including early public examination of the Honourable Daniel Andrews, the Honourable Jacinta Allan MP, and the Honourable Ben Carroll MP …

our current leader. The point is this: why should ministers and former ministers and premiers and former premiers be able to get off scot-free and not be under the same scrutiny as every other Victorian that is going to have to go through this? They should be. And let me tell you, it is not going to pass the pub test if they get up there and go, ‘I don’t recall.’ I actually think we will see a mutiny in Victoria. The motion states:

(e) be led by an independent interstate commissioner in consultation with the opposition …

Yes, because the opposition has every right to be in consultation here, because we are here to make sure that this government is held to account. We want it to be independent, because we know that Labor cannot examine itself, because a criminal cannot examine another criminal – and they are all mates – can they? It is not going to be done properly. It further states:

(f) commence public hearings before the election –

(Time expired)

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (15:43): I thank my colleagues Ms Crozier, Mr Mulholland and Mrs Hermans for their contributions and also Dr Mansfield from the Greens and Mr Limbrick from the Libertarians, and I absolutely thank those in the Labor Party who tried to defend the indefensible – Mr Batchelor, Mr McIntosh and Ms Ermacora.

Let us be clear here: we would not have known about this corruption, this $15 billion worth of CFMEU corruption and this money that went to strippers, bikies and criminals all over the place, except for the Liberal National Party in Queensland, who conducted the inquiry. That is how we know about this. That is the reason we need to get to the bottom of it here in Victoria. And you people who have had an epiphany all of a sudden that you want to have a royal commission, well, you did not want one when Jacinta Allan was the Premier. But now that you have knifed her, you actually want a royal commission. Well, hello, you have come to the party way too late. Get with the program. You should have supported it from the beginning. In fact you should have stemmed the corruption. You would have known it was going on. You were a party to it; you were absolutely a party to it.

Dr Mansfield said we do not need this, we could just have extra powers for IBAC. Well, we produced a private members bill on that very point – and thank you, Dr Mansfield; you supported it – but the Labor Party did not want to give extra powers to IBAC. They defeated it in that other chamber over there. We absolutely need not only to give IBAC extra powers to follow this $15 billion and counting but to have a royal commission to hold you people accountable – every one of you. You need to be held accountable. Your leaders, your department secretaries, your bosses, your union mates – they all need to be held accountable, absolutely. My goodness me.

Talk about Backflip Ben. I mean, can you believe a few weeks ago it was ‘There is no need for a royal commission – too expensive, not needed’, but all of a sudden the polls said something different, and gosh, not only did they need to replace the Premier, even though he had looked her in the eye and said ‘I will never replace you’, but all of a sudden he found he needed a royal commission as well. He lied to his daughter. How can you possibly sit over there and talk about truth? Truth is not negotiable. Integrity is not negotiable. It was negotiable under Jacinta Allan, it was negotiable when Ben Carroll stood joined at the hip with her, but it is not negotiable now. Honesty is not negotiable. That is what we stand for. Transparency is not negotiable. Accountability is not negotiable. You cannot lie straight in bed on the issue of truth, integrity, accountability and responsibility. You just do not know how to be honest in the way you deliver government in this state. Shame on you. The taxpayers of this state have been ripped off for way too long. There are people that cannot get a bed in hospital. There are criminals marauding in the streets. This is the crime capital of Australia. It is the high tax capital of Australia. It is the debt capital of Australia. Everything is wrong about this state, and you are absolutely fundamentally responsible.

You stand there and say we are providing terms of reference that you do not like. Well, let me tell you, the people of Victoria will vote on 28 November, and they will deliver you a message – a message that says, ‘We want truth. We want accountability. We want transparency. We want honesty in government, and we want to stem the waste that is going on in this state, the waste that is ruining everything about this state.’ We need to support this motion. I urge the crossbench to support the motion. We need to hold this government to account. We need to do everything possible to make sure the people of Victoria understand that the government need to be honest, accountable, transparent and do the right thing by the taxpayers of Victoria.

Council divided on motion: