Introduction
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (09:42): I am pleased to rise to support the Manager of Opposition Business on the introduction of the Integrity of Government Construction Projects Bill 2026, and this should not come as any surprise to government members. This is a position that the opposition has had for a number of years now – that we need to ensure that we get crooks off government-funded construction sites. If there is any doubt about why that is important, it should have been laid to rest after the release of the Watson report a couple of weeks ago. It should have been laid to rest by the ‘Building bad’ reports by the Age, 60 Minutes and Channel 9 over the last couple of years. All of these things have been raised repeatedly, highlighting that the Victorian government Big Build projects have been swamped by crooks, criminals and bikies. This is something that should be understood by the Labor government. I hear government members, government ministers, saying, ‘This is a matter for government. We can’t be doing private members bills. It’s government business.’ This is the Parliament of the people of Victoria. The people of Victoria have elected all 88 of us to represent their interests, and the Parliament should be considering legislation like this at a time when we have seen $15 billion of Victorians’ taxpayer money go missing because the government was asleep at the wheel and allowed the CFMEU to bring on bikies and criminals and gangs.
Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Speaker, the member on his feet is required to be factual, and in fact he is making speculative comments. I ask that you ask him to be factual.
The SPEAKER: It is a requirement that all members be factual. I am sure members are already responding to the spirit of standing order 58.
Danny O’BRIEN: It is extraordinary that the government on the one hand are saying ‘We’re doing this, we’re acting, we’re responding’ and on the other hand are saying that all the allegations that we are raising are unfactual. Which is it, government members? Do they accept that there is corruption happening on government worksites or not? The evidence has been pretty clear for a number of years now. That is what this legislation is about. This is the third piece of legislation we have moved this week to try and clean up Victoria. We have moved this week to try and give IBAC the powers that it wants, the follow-the-dollar powers, to go beyond government agencies and into the private sector and to third parties to ensure that we can follow the dollar. What did Labor do? They opposed that. Yesterday we brought in the legislation for Construction Enforcement Victoria. We committed to that two years ago and to bringing back the code of practice. If you are going to have a code of practice in the building and construction industry, you need to have a watchdog to enforce that. That is what that legislation was about. Government once again opposed it. Here today is now the third tranche of legislation which we think is needed to ensure that we are delivering on the concerns of Victorians when it comes to the Big Build project and to ensure that we do not have crooks, bikies and criminal bosses working on and benefiting from government contracts on government projects. We have seen –
Jess Wilson interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: It is not a lot to ask, Leader of the Opposition. I would have thought it would be fairly straightforward. I would have thought that perhaps the people of Victoria are pretty keen to see us actually get to the bottom of where this $15 billion has gone and who has been responsible for siphoning it off to criminals and bikies, and yet we have got the government members not interested. They are not interested in doing this. They say, ‘Oh, we fixed all that.’ We have got the Premier who says, ‘I wrote a letter to IBAC and said they should investigate this – job done.’ IBAC wrote back and said, ‘I’m sorry, Premier. We can’t; you haven’t given us the powers to do so.’ What does the government do? When we moved this week to give IBAC those powers, the government opposed them, and yet we are told Victorians are meant to believe that this government is serious about cracking down on corruption on Big Build building projects. It is just an extraordinary situation that the Labor government is not prepared to act on these issues. We hear government ministers say, ‘This is the government’s time. The opposition should sit down.’ This is the Parliament of Victoria doing the job that the Labor government refuses to do. The Labor government is refusing to act on the $15 billion of corruption, the $15 billion to criminals on worksites and the state-sponsored strippers and the action by people to try and coerce businesses. This legislation is critical. We should be debating it today to ensure that government worksites are clean. We know we want to clean up Victoria. It seems the Labor government wants to keep covering it up.