The public deserves to know where the Big Build billions went

July 11, 2026 — 5:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

“Not everything can be reduced to a headline. I wrote this in The Age today.” That’s how Premier Jacinta Allan shared her article last week apologising for “what happened” on the $100 billion Big Build program with her 108,000 or so followers on Instagram.

For once, we can say that we are in total agreement with the premier. When it comes to establishing the nature and extent of the corruption that found its way onto the Victorian government’s major infrastructure projects, details matter.

That’s why The Age’s investigative team have filed dozens of exclusives looking into the sort of people who were being employed on work sites across the state, how they had come to be hired and what objections were raised to alleged abuses of process involved.

It’s also why we have done our best, when confronted with stonewalling officials and a secretive bureaucracy, to establish who in government knew about corruption on the Big Build, when they knew and what, if anything, they chose to do about it.

In the past month alone, we have revealed using leaked documents that the consortium building the Metro Tunnel was compelled to hire non-productive workers, driving up costs, and that “this approach was supported by the state”.

We have reported on meetings where in one case the premier’s chief........

© The Age