Australians have to cut the cartel of corruption out of the construction industry unless we want to pay through poor value projects, high taxes and debt.

On Thursday the Herald Sun revealed the latest in a long list of allegations of corruption scandals on Victorian Big Build projects.

Where a rogue operator might ordinarily be the the culprit, it is increasingly clear that whistleblowers are now the rogue element in Big Build projects.

Whether it is the North East Link or the Suburban Rail Loop, graft is clearly the commodity to get the job done.

We should never forget who pays for these underhanded payments. It is us, the taxpayers. Preferential deals for access mean workers aren’t selected on skill, which means project delivery takes longer. Projects take longer and they cost more pushing up cost. Higher costs mean higher debt, and tomorrow’s taxes.

But for the beneficiaries the experience is very different. Brown paper bags are filled with untaxed income. Jobs are given to mates. And they’re able to extract obscene wages from your taxes for longer.

If it has already been revealed by the Herald Sun that $5,000 brown paper bags need to be passed to project superintendents for 150 workers to be able to get on the job, and similar reports of $10,000 payments so subbies can get on site - you know it doesn’t end there.

And it has been revealed that when Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, was shown evidence this was going on when she was infrastructure minister her response was to ignore, dismiss and accept the conduct like a meme character sitting amongst a bonfire of flames and declare “this is fine”.

But when brown paper bags aren’t paid, Molotov cocktails follow. In Melbourne there have been allegations of union officials allegedly firebombing contractors cars, and in Sydney allegations of contractors firebombing union officials cars.

It has led the national administrator appointed to bring the CFMEU out of the criminal shadows and into the lawful light, Mark Irving KC, to highlight in his recent report that there are explicit links between the union and organised crime, and that corporates are hiring organised crime to protect themselves too.

It’s easy to dismiss this is simple corruption. But it is far more than that. The CFMEU and other unions are getting away with it because of the cartel governance model of Labor.

It’s both incredibly sophisticated, and concurrently hides in plain sight.

Federal Labor governments get elected and create the cashflow. They compel 12 per cent of your wage to go into super funds that unions control. Unions use super as their plaything. These funds shower your super back onto unions through “marketing expenses”, and unions donate them back to Labor to campaign to hold government to keep the cash flowing.

Meanwhile, State Labor governments commission public projects and create the kickbacks. State governments go to the same super funds to finance these projects, and insist on union workers. The unions then demand obscene pay rates and State governments comply paid from your taxes. Taxes go up and debt explodes, but the unions get their kickbacks. The unions then donate their windfalls back to Labor to keep them in government and keep the cash flowing.

It’s the cartel kickback circle of life. And at every point you’re paying cartel kickbacks through your super, higher taxes, higher debt and poor value.

The model is the same all around Australia. The same behaviour is being revealed in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. The only place there’s an attempt to stop it is Queensland, where strangely there’s a Liberal National government and they’ve launched an inquiry into the cartel behaviour of the CFMEU.

Those engaging in the corruption are engaging in corruption and should be held accountable. But the cartel won’t be stopped until voters dethrone the cartel’s enablers - and that is always Labor governments.

Published in the Herald Sun, Friday 19 September 2025