Thursday, 4 December 2025

E&OE

Tom Elliott: Our next guest is the shadow industrial relations spokesperson in the Federal Parliament. He's also the member for Goldstein, and Goldstein takes in the site of the new Cheltenham station, which will form one end of the first part of the suburban rail loop. Tim Wilson, good morning.

Tim Wilson MP: Good morning Tom.

Tom Elliott: Well have you have you heard about this warning and should we be concerned about it given that we're the ones paying for it, the suburban rail loop, I mean?

Tim Wilson MP: Absolutely we've heard about it. It doesn't surprise, sadly, the experience in Victoria is that whistleblowers have told us about brown paper bags of up to $10,000 for bpay to bikie gangs and organised crime for workers to be able to access state government projects. Even worse than that Jacinta Allan the Premier has known about these about this conduct and has turned a blind eye on projects like the Northeast Link. There's documents to prove this. The state government is not just knowing of it, they're complicit in in the practice and it's taxpayers' money basically finding its way into the hands of organised crime.

Tom Elliott: I mean this might be taking a bit of a bold step here, but because it is the unions and you know the Labor Party is funded by the unions and because it's taxpayers' money, it's not, you know, Jacinta Allan or any politicians' personal money, do they care that that organised crime might be skimming, you know, thousands, millions of dollars off the top of projects like these?

Tim Wilson MP: Well it's the cartel kickback liquidity that's flowing through from the taxpayer through to the CFMEU and ultimately money then gets donated in the millions to the Labor Party to finance their campaigns. And this is the problem. It's all a cartel kickback circle of life between the state government, the unions, the projects, and then what goes back to help the government stay in power. And this is why it's so concerning and we're all paying for it. We're paying too much for projects, they're overpriced, we're getting poor value, but even more than that, we're incurring the debt because of course it's not being financed from taxes even being raised today, it's being put on to future generations and of course it's driving up inflation because the money needs to be borrowed and it's putting up prices for every Australian today.

Tom Elliott: Well yeah, I was going to talk about that later on because the Reserve Bank has come out and actually accused the federal government of contributing to inflation by borrowing too much money and that's the reason that interest rates aren't going down. Okay, so you're the federal shadow industrial relations spokesperson, but can you do anything about this?

Tim Wilson MP: Well we can because Geoffrey Watson SC did a report into the violence in the CFMEU in Queensland, and that report has been publicly released by the CFMEU administrator. We know from public evidence that he's now done report into violence and intimidation and corruption into the Victorian CFMEU. It was handed to the CFMEU administrator on Monday. That report should be released so we know the scale of the problem and to make sure that then there's appropriate enforcement of the law, including legal action.

Tom Elliott: But who is this administrator? Like I mean, are they just a fellow union member, not tainted by these accusations, or are they someone who will genuinely try and get to the bottom of this corruption or what?

Tim Wilson MP: Well he's not a well, as far as I'm aware, he's not a union member, but he was put in place to try and clean up the corruption within the union. But he's got a very difficult task because everyone he's appointed people to senior positions within the union already. And some of those people have been put in positions to clean up issues of corruption and have since been sacked on allegations themselves. So part of the problem is there's a corrupt system that exists and he's fighting I think as much with one arm behind his back because the problems are endemic. They extend beyond just the union itself. We talk about organised crime, criminal elements, and of course bikie gangs and of course it's directly connected into state government projects under the Allan government.

Tom Elliott: Do you think I mean given we're less than a year away now from the next state election in Victoria, I know that's not directly your issue because you're a federal MP, but do we just have to assume that the Suburban Rail Loop is going ahead, that they'll start the tunnel boring machines early in the new year such that by the time of the election the project will be too far advanced just to stop it?

Tim Wilson MP: I'm not prepared to accept that at the end of the day because the state government is going to do everything they can to guarantee the cartel kickbacks keep flowing through to the CFMEU and the Labor Party funded by the Victorian public. We need to make sure that there is proper scrutiny and accountability all the way up to the state election because the impact of this is very serious and we will continue to pay the price for it for a long time to come.

Tom Elliott: All right, thank you for your time. Tim Wilson there, Shadow Industrial Relations spokesperson. He's a Liberal member for Goldstein, which is the federal seat that has part of Cheltenham in it, which is where the southeastern end of the Suburban Rail Loop stage one will be located.

ENDS