There are no banks of cameras on the street outside Melbourne’s Magistrates Court, which is always telling. The camos always know, like animals before an earthquake.
The court has put aside nine chairs for the media, which proves to be about right, and the journos gathered in the lobby outside G.2 don’t gossip about the proceedings they are about to view, but about the coming state election, about other court cases.
Even the room where it happens is low-key and officious; a small, anonymous modern courtroom with none of the grandeur other courthouses offer. With its pale fluorescent lights and grey-blue carpets, it would be as comfortable hosting a council meeting as it is allegations of billions of dollars worth of high-level corruption.
If we are to assume the opening session of the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects marks the formal beginning of the end of a quarter of a century of Labor dominance in Victoria (in power 23 out of the last 27 years), it passed with relatively little drama.
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The commission has been set up to investigate allegations of widespread criminal infiltration of the government’s gargantuan Big Build program, and into what the government knew, and when it knew it. The allegations, covered at length in the Nine papers, have already cost former premier Jacinta Allan — who obstinately refused to call the commission — her job, and will likely drown out anything the ALP try to argue in favour of its reelection between now and November’s state election.
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Allan’s replacement Ben Carroll (from the shop assistants’ union-dominated faction of the party) called this commission as his first act of what is widely presumed to be a furniture-saving performance. The death of this government has been predicted before, but that was under Dan Andrews, who provoked both a truly baffling level of loathing in the media and utter adulation from his supporters.
There’s an amusingly long, silent wait between attendees being told to stand and Commissioner Chris Kourakis entering the room. After an Acknowledgement of Country (thanks to Dictator Dan, I assume!) Kourakis directs his associate, Peter Tantalos, to read out the 25-minute letters patent that establishes the inquiry and its scope.
“Please don’t regard the reading out of this letters patent as a tedious formality,” Kourakis says.
“It is the document which constitutes this commission. By having it read, all who hear it will appreciate — and I and the staff of the commission will be reminded — of the breadth and depth and importance of the inquiry we have been charged to conduct.”
So kicks off an hour-and-a-half-long death knell.
Counsel Assisting, Chris Young, opens with some of the human impacts of what is alleged to have happened: a “small Indigenous-owned business” that wrote to the government claiming to have evidence of being threatened with violence and banned from worksites and then hearing nothing back for a year, by which time it was on the verge of collapse. Workers who say they were fired for being a member of the wrong union. A woman who says she was fired for reporting an incident at the hands of a man engaged on a work site who had recently been released from prison for stalking.
But it is the money involved that made the headlines. The figures at the heart of this case are monumental — we are told the Big Build projects totalled around $150 billion, and the famous $15 billion in waste thanks to criminal activity is cited. Young points out this is a “back of the envelope” figure and, as Allan protested at the time it was first levelled — as part of an investigation by barrister Geoffrey Watson — that the figure is “untested“. Now comes the test.
It is Allan who inarguably dominates the first open hearing. The first pieces of documentary evidence tendered are briefing notes prepared for Allan in June 2023 when she was the relevant minister. The first details anecdotal reports of “intimidatory tactics” by union officials on Big Build worksites, and “potential criminal elements (for example outlaw motorcycle club members and convicted criminals) being present on [Major Transport Infrastructure Authority] worksites”. The briefing note is not signed, nor is the box marked “noted” ticked:
Allan, through a spokesperson, claimed to be unaware of this brief. However, a second ministerial briefing that was tabled, from the same day and which references the above briefing, was signed by her.
“Whether, when, and how its contents reach the former premier are questions this commission will examine, and the former premier will have every opportunity to respond,” Young said. A letter from Allan to then-Victoria Police commissioner Shane Patton a few days after these briefing notes, passing on the allegations she had received about criminal behaviour, was also tabled.
Young is at pains to say the commission does not represent an attack on unions, or legitimate industrial action in pursuit of greater safety or good conditions. But while the commission will apparently focus on the legislative framework which may have allowed for the alleged corruption — for example the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission — one can point out, without defending any of the alleged conduct, that for all the focus on the “ostentatious” lawlessness of the CFMEU, practically all industrial action in Australia is illegal.
Still, the impression of billions in public money allegedly finding its way into the pockets of bullies and criminals, insufficiently overseen for reasons of political expedience (whether because of the CFMEU’s factional power or a single-minded focus on delivering high-profile projects on time) is already out there. One wonders how much worse that will get as the commission grills union leaders, politicians, advisers, high-level public servants during the next batch of public hearings in November.
Young said at one point the commission’s work “will not be shaped by” the coming election on November 28. But the reverse will surely be true.