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Victoria's $100 Billion Big Build Infiltrated by Criminal Networks
The Victorian Premier has confirmed criminal networks penetrated the state's $100 billion-plus infrastructure program, but her refusal to call a royal commission raises questions about what accountability will actually look like.
How we reported this
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan stood before cameras on Friday and confirmed what union officials, construction insiders and federal investigators had been saying privately for months: organised crime had found a foothold inside the Big Build, the sprawling infrastructure program that spans the Metro Tunnel, the Suburban Rail Loop and dozens of road and hospital projects across the state. She rejected calls for a royal commission, announcing instead an expanded remit for the existing Major Projects Integrity Taskforce.
The admission matters because it arrives at a moment when every state government in the country, including NSW Labor under Premier Chris Minns, is betting its political legacy on mega-infrastructure. If Victoria cannot account for who is working on its sites and where the money is going, the pressure on Sydney's own project pipeline will intensify almost immediately. NSW has $112 billion committed to infrastructure through to 2030, according to Infrastructure NSW's most recent portfolio update, including the Metro West tunnelling works currently under Parramatta Road and the $2.2 billion redevelopment of Nepean Hospital at Kingswood.
How Victoria got here
The problems did not emerge overnight. The Australian Federal Police and the Victorian Organised Crime Intelligence Unit began exchanging information about suspicious sub-contracting arrangements on Big Build sites as early as mid-2023, according to documents tabled in the Victorian upper house last year. Investigators identified a pattern: labour-hire companies with obscure ownership structures were winning sub-contracts on Suburban Rail Loop earthworks near Cheltenham and on the North East Link corridor in Melbourne's outer east. Workers were being paid in part through cash, and in some cases names on payroll records did not match site access logs.
By late 2024, the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union's Victorian branch had itself flagged concerns to the Major Projects Integrity Taskforce about specific employers it said were undercutting enterprise agreement rates. That referral sat with the taskforce for more than seven months before any public disclosure, a delay Allan's office has declined to explain in detail.
Allan's decision to expand the taskforce rather than call a royal commission is a calculated one. A royal commission would compel testimony, seize documents and run for years, producing findings that could land in the middle of a state election cycle and expose decisions made under her predecessor Daniel Andrews. The taskforce, staffed by 34 investigators as of this week, has no such powers of compulsion.
Why Sydney is watching closely
The construction procurement model Victoria used, competitive tendering with extensive sub-contracting chains, is effectively identical to what NSW uses on its own major works. At the Pyrmont Bridge Road upgrade near Ultimo, at the Frederick Street station excavations in Ashfield for Metro West, and on the Western Sydney Airport rail link out of St Marys, the same labour-hire architecture exists. The NSW Office of the Building Commissioner, established in 2020 under David Chandler, has broader powers over residential construction than over major civil works, a gap that industry figures have raised repeatedly with the Minns government.
The Construction Industry Consultative Council, which advises the NSW government, wrote to Infrastructure NSW in March 2026 raising concerns about due-diligence requirements for sub-contractors on publicly funded projects. That submission was still listed as under review on the council's website as of Thursday.
New South Wales recorded 1,847 workplace safety incidents on major infrastructure sites in the 12 months to March 2026, according to SafeWork NSW data, a number the regulator noted included a rising proportion where sub-contractor relationships complicated the enforcement chain.
The immediate practical question for NSW is whether Minns will direct Infrastructure NSW to audit its sub-contracting registers before Victoria's taskforce reports. Industry sources say that audit, if ordered, would take roughly three months and cost somewhere between $8 million and $12 million. The alternative is waiting to see what Melbourne turns up, and hoping the findings do not travel north.