Jacinta Allan has carefully suggested her government will tackle corruption. It won’t

March 12, 2026 — 5:00am

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Given how fast things are moving, I won’t take up more of your time than necessary. By the time you finish this column, who knows what will have happened in Iran, on global markets, or in the shitosphere of Kyle and Jackie O.

But in the relatively quiet village of Victorian politics, there is something that deserves your attention. It is now painstakingly clear that the Allan government has no plans to give more power to the state’s anti-corruption agency.

Why is a government facing the biggest corruption problem since the WA Inc scandal determined not to give IBAC what it needs to detect and deter crooked behaviour?

The simplest answer is that the Victorian Labor Party sees union corruption and criminal infiltration of its Big Build program as a lesser evil than giving IBAC, an anti-corruption agency it doesn’t trust, the powers and funding to be more effective.

This is an indictment of both the Labor Party and to a lesser extent IBAC, an organisation that has spent the past 10 years tugging at the edges but never quite getting to the heart of the state’s descent into Tammany Hall-style government.

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Chip Le GrandState political editor

State political editor

It also evokes a truism of Australian politics, otherwise known as the Greiner rule, which states that integrity reform always looks better from opposition than it does in government.

For those unfamiliar with his rule, the manner 24 years ago in which the newly formed ICAC devoured its father, former NSW premier Nick Greiner, still endures as a cautionary tale.

In Victoria, it took a change in government to establish IBAC and another to give it powers and jurisdiction more closely resembling – although still well shy of – those enjoyed by its NSW cousin. If Victoria is to finally have a robust IBAC with follow-the-money powers, reasonable scope to conduct public hearings and a degree of independence in its funding arrangements, it’ll take another change of government in November.

The opposition, if taken at its word, is intent on these and other IBAC reforms, for reasons of both good policy and hard-nosed politics.

The rationale is that the Liberal and National parties, through their long years on the opposition benches, understand the limitations that have prevented IBAC from being a serious check on a government which recognises no significant distinction between the public interest and its own electoral interests.

The political reason is that the question of IBAC reform has become a proxy measure of the premier’s response to the Building Bad scandal.

It is likely that an empowered and well-resourced IBAC would not have stopped the CFMEU from running amok. But when the opposition talks about IBAC, it is an invitation for voters to consider the estimated $15 billion cost of criminality and intimidation associated with major projects.

It has become clear from talking to senior people inside the Allan government and broader Labor movement that neither the premier nor her government shares the opposition’s desire to make it any easier for IBAC to do its job.

It is an article of faith for Labor that IBAC has become politicised. Once you subscribe to this view, giving more resources to IBAC is putting good money after bad. As one senior figure put it: “The more power you give IBAC, the more people will come to regret it.”

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Chip Le GrandState political editor

State political editor

Over the past couple of months, whenever Premier Jacinta Allan has felt the heat from Nick McKenzie’s indefatigable reporting about gangsters on publicly funded building sites, she and other government ministers have dangled a little teaser about the prospect of IBAC reform.

Their carefully worded references to a parliamentary integrity oversight committee report that last year recommended major surgery to the IBAC Act give the impression that this government, in time, will do what is needed to give IBAC what it needs.

After all, the reforms recommended by the committee are what successive IBAC commissioners have asked for, repeatedly, for more than a decade.

Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny says the government is considering the committee’s report and reviewing its findings and will respond in due course.

Let me save you the suspense. It ain’t gonna happen. Not while Labor thinks it can win.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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