Royal commission is exposing rot in government, and it’s just getting started

Editorial

November 13, 2026 — 6:19pm

Thursday was a particularly black day for the Victorian government. It is one that stands out even amid almost 2½ years of denial and disgrace for the government over its handling of the scandal engulfing its $109 billion Big Build program.

The spectacle of a visibly enraged counsel assisting the royal commission Chris Young, KC, leading the inquiry through documents covered in thick slabs of black ink redactions should trouble anyone who had hope for a revival of government transparency in this state.

Young told Commissioner Chris Kourakis, AC, that the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority (VIDA) had provided many such heavily redacted documents, had delayed discovery and was arguably not complying with its legal duties.

This was “profoundly disappointing”, Young said, given Premier Ben Carroll’s public assertions his government considered the royal commission’s work important.

Kourakis noted that the approach to discovery of government agencies had impeded the orderly running of his inquiry. A rebuke from a royal commissioner this early in his work is alarming.

Carroll had, only two days earlier, responded to a much milder rebuke from the commission on Monday to the state government on this topic by accepting there was a need to do better.

On Thursday, in the face of the much more strident and serious criticism, Carroll meekly ducked, suggesting he was not going to offer a running commentary on the commission.

The Age is more than happy to take up that role.

Notwithstanding the government’s apparent obstruction, the revelations the commission produced through its first week of witness examinations were devastating.

In focusing on the case study of the $110 million Gap Road level crossing removal, the commission exposed the irrefutable truth of so much that the government has rubbished or brushed off since The Age’s Building Bad investigation blew the lid off the industry in mid-2024.

That investigation revealed that senior staff had tried to warn Jacinta Allan, when she was minister, that the CFMEU was out of control before Building Bad broke.

As premier, she denied this, even in the face of a leaked ministerial brief from mid-2023.

On Tuesday, the commission revealed the government’s most senior bureaucrats had also drafted two almost-identical ministerial briefs for her, once in 2022 and again in January 2023, warning of exactly this phenomenon.

The Age reported that the minister’s office had intervened in the Gap Road dispute, saying if the contractors could not make peace with the union, including that they appoint a CFMEU-aligned labour hire company, they would not win further work. Allan said anyone with evidence of this should report it to police.

On Wednesday, a top John Holland executive said he was told this by a government official. He was so concerned that he rang that official’s boss, who confirmed there was a “view in government” that if John Holland could not win peace with the union it would not be getting in on the state’s record-breaking infrastructure binge.

When asked whose view that was, he said he was told: “The minister’s office.”

The official suggested the company needed to meet with the union to sort it out.

The Age also reported in July that not only was the threat general but that there was specific mention of the airport rail project. Again, this was denied by Allan.

Executives from John Holland and other companies involved in the project, plus a former CFMEU organiser, gave sworn evidence to the commission that this happened at the now-infamous meeting at the CFMEU’s headquarters.

The organiser, Paul Tzimas, said his boss Joe Myles had boasted to the construction executives that he had a “direct line to Jacinta Allan’s office”.

Carroll has tried to make his establishment of the royal commission a founding virtue of his premiership. And if that premiership ends later this month, he deserves to be remembered as the person who did the right thing regardless of what it meant for his party’s political prospects.

His government and its agencies, however, have reverted to bad habits in a bid to avoid the uncomfortable glare of scrutiny.

Young noted that an executive meeting of government’s infrastructure agency took place at a key point in the Gap Road fiasco, but it cannot find any notes or minutes for the meeting. No explanation has been provided for this curious failure. Nor have we yet heard why those damaging briefs prepared for the minister were not signed by her.

The government’s redactions highlighted by the commission blatantly incorporated material that was both relevant to the commission’s work and damaging for the government, including notes showing top officials were acutely aware of the consequences of delays at Gap Road.

Following Thursday’s dressing down from the commissioner, it appeared government agencies had lifted their game. Counsel assisting the royal commission Chris Carr, SC, was “happy to report there has been substantial production of highly relevant material overnight.

“That material has allowed us to identify further lines of inquiry, which we must pursue over the weekend and on Monday morning.”

The Age was pleased to hear it.

The frustration of the commission’s work – through the ridiculous and cynical redactions – threatens to undermine Carroll’s legacy as the leader who brought truth to an ageing government.

There has been too much of that already.

And the commission is just getting started.

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