Finally, the royal commission Victoria desperately needs

August 22, 2026 — 5:00am

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“As early as 2010, [The Age] and the ABC were reporting that crime intelligence linked building industry corruption to bikie gangs, the narcotics trade and the CFMEU. If the press knew, then the public knew. If the public knew, then the government must have known.”

So wrote Geoffrey Watson, SC, who was assigned to investigate corruption in the CFMEU’s Victorian branch and quickly came to the conclusion that “this was a uniquely Victorian problem ... the problems in Victoria were exponentially worse and far more dangerous than elsewhere”.

It was a view built on years of this masthead’s reporting, as we sought to establish the connections between the giant union’s construction arm and organised crime on the taxpayer-funded Big Build. A vital part of our investigations was establishing the extent to which those connections led into the heart of Victoria’s Labor government.

In June, we said that neither the Allan government nor any that succeeded it could be taken seriously until it came clean on what was known and when. Jacinta Allan staked her credibility on the claim that our Building Bad series in July 2024 was the first indication her government had of such corruption. It cost both her credibility and her job.

Her successor as premier, Ben Carroll, has made a different kind of wager. It began on Thursday with a welcome admission: “It is clear – and I want to........

© The Age