It would be nice to say better late than never, but premier deserves no prizes for belated action

It would be nice to say better late than never, but even that isn’t true of Premier Jacinta Allan’s decision to finally concede Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog needs more powers to tackle graft on the $109 billion Big Build.

The problem with Allan’s Monday afternoon announcement is that Victorians learnt IBAC must wait until the end of 2027 to get powers it desperately needs to identify which bikie gangs and members of Melbourne’s underworld have lined their pockets care of the infrastructure scheme the premier previously oversaw as minister.

Even then, a year after this year’s November election, IBAC may not have the powers it needs to do the job required. The devil will be in the detail and that is yet to be fully worked out.

Every Victorian who has been paying attention knows the time for action by Allan was in mid-2024, when it was first revealed that gangland figures had supercharged their unholy alliance with the Labor-friendly CFMEU to feast on the Big Build.

Here are the facts. Bikie gangs placed their senior members, friends and relatives in cushy Big Build jobs, while the CFMEU directed lucrative Big Build subcontracts to companies in bed with underworld figures such as Mick Gatto.

Two years later, Premier Allan can’t say how much taxpayer money has ended up in the pockets of those who should never have received it care of the Big Build.

Allan is quick to say it’s not $15 billion, the number offered separately by corruption-busting barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, and by the Fair Work Commission’s Murray Furlong, but the premier can’t offer an alternative figure.

She can’t tell Victorians why a single public servant or politician is yet to be meaningfully held to account for what is the biggest corruption scandal in the state’s recent history. She can’t explain how the state will recover plundered funds. In fact, Allan won’t even concede the fact of corruption on the Big Build.

Instead, she clings to the weasel word “allegations”. As the minister previously responsible for the Big Build, and now the premier, Allan bears ultimate responsibility for an infrastructure scheme whose design and management enabled serious corruption and rorting.

She is yet to acknowledge this simple fact meaningfully with any sort of contrition or admission of error. Perhaps it’s too late for her to credibly do so, but it remains the right thing to do.

It is misleading for the premier to claim (as she has done now for two years) that Victoria Police can investigate Big Build corruption. Much of the grubby conduct, such as rampant bikie gang-linked Big Buil