Daniel Andrews couldn’t spend our money fast enough. It is no surprise crooks cashed in

February 18, 2026 — 7:00pm

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In Geoffrey Watson’s telling of how the Victorian “Big Build” infrastructure program transferred billions of dollars from the pockets of taxpayers into the accounts of hi-vis criminals, the barrister and anti-corruption campaigner poses an essential question: Why did the state government do nothing to stop it?

In seeking to answer his own question, Watson offers two theories in a previously redacted section of his “Rotting from the Top” report tabled last week in the Queensland government’s Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU.

The first, which he rejects, is that the Andrews and Allan governments have run a protection racket for their Labor mates in the state’s largest construction union.

As Watson points out, by the time the level crossing removals, West Gate Tunnel and Metro Tunnel projects really got going, CFMEU boss John Setka and his cronies had fallen out with the Victorian government. They’d already found more useful idiots in Adam Bandt and his Greens, who as late as 2024 resisted the appointment of an administrator to clean up the union’s Victorian branch.

Watson’s second theory, which he leans towards, is that the Victorian government, like so many building companies, was too spooked by the risk of industrial action and costly project delays to act upon evidence of union malfeasance and corruption.

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© The Age