Every morning, Sam* wakes up around 4am, puts on his steel cap boots and drives to work on a construction site in Melbourne’s south-east. The summer heat has been relentless, but he says the pay is solid, the crew tight and the site safe.
He credits this to his union, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union – or CFMEU – which was thrust back into the national spotlight last week after the release of a report by corruption fighter Geoffrey Watson SC.
It alleged that over two decades the Victorian branch morphed from a trade union into a “crime syndicate”, with government sites operating as “drug distribution centres”, strippers performing on night shift and bribes and extortion commonplace.
The report was commissioned by the CFMEU’s administrator, who was appointed by the federal government to take over the construction arm in mid-2024, after an investigation by Nine newspapers which alleged bikies and underworld figures had infiltrated government projects.
Sam, who asked to use a pseudonym amid the scrutiny on his union, hasn’t read the report. Nor have his colleagues.
“As long as we get paid, get our RDOs [rostered days off] and get home safe, it’s really not going to change anything for us,” he says.
Kelly, who asked that her surname not be published for privacy reasons, also hasn’t read the report and says it’s not going to stop her from being a CFMEU member. She recalls a previous non-union site where workers had to use public toilets and “sometimes that would be a petrol station [or] McDonald’s”. Now she has gendered facilities and free period products.
But the scandals that have plagued the union have also had an impact on Kelly.
“If I’m grocery shopping after work and I’m still in my work clothes, I feel like the public treats you differently,” she says.
“You get looks. It’s probably made us feel a little bit unsafe.”
While workers keep their heads down, a political storm is building in state parliament. It threatens to engulf the premier, Jacinta Allan, who oversaw Victoria’s $100bn Big Build as infrastructure minister before replacing Daniel Andrews in 2023.
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Allan had hoped to spend the lead-up to the November election campaigning on delivery – the Metro Tunnel and West Gate Tunnel opened last year, Footscray hospital this week – but the hospital’s opening was overshadowed by questions over what she knew about the CFMEU and when.
Redacted chapters dog Allan
In 2024 Allan referred allegations about criminality in the CFMEU’s Victorian construction arm to the state’s corruption watchdog, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (Ibac), though it was revealed this week the watchdog told the premier it was outside its remit just three months later. She didn’t pursue it further.
Allan also asked the Fair Work Commission to examine enterprise bargaining agreements used on Victorian construction sites and commissioned an independent review that led to legislative changes, including bans on organised crime groups from government work sites and the creation of a construction complaints referral authority.
Victoria police also established Operation Hawk to target organised crime on government sites, arresting 22 people for 72 offences since July 2024.
Labor MPs believed the issue was contained. That changed when Watson’s report – including two redacted chapters – was released to a Queensland inquiry into the CFMEU last week.
Watson alleged the problems were unique to Victoria, tied to the leadership of former boss John Setka, who resigned amid scandal in 2024, and the scale of the Big Build.
Watson wrote that the CFMEU muscled the Australian Workers’ Union off civil projects “through a combination of violence and intimidation”, and turned jobs into “lucrative” commodities that “corrupt organisers and delegates bought and sold”, including to “patched bikies, meth abusers, violent standover men, killers, boxers and cage fighters”.
But it was the redacted sections that caused the most political damage.
One alleged the union’s conduct cost taxpayers at least $15bn, much of it “poured directly into the hands of criminals and organised crime gangs”. Another claimed the Victorian government “knew and had a duty to know” about the corruption but did “nothing about it”.
The administrator removed the chapters, because he was “not satisfied that they were well-founded or properly tested”.
But the $15bn figure has dogged Allan and key questions revolve around what she knew and when.
Asked about the issue at press conferences this week, Allan described the allegations in the report as “sickening” and “disgusting” and rejected the $15bn figure. She also said she had “already acted to ensure that Victoria police have additional tools and powers” to crack down on alleged illegal activity on job sites.
“If there are any allegations of criminal behaviour, they should be reported and should have been reported to the relevant agencies,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “I’ve said on previous occasions when matters were raised with me, I referred them, and that was my expectation of everyone involved in delivering [the Big Build].”
Privately, Labor MPs admit Allan’s biggest challenge is her proximity to the issue.
Or as one MP put it bluntly: “She was the minister. If Dan [Andrews] was here he would have sacked her by now.”
Labor MPs demand reforms
Since the administration, 270 union officials and staff have been removed from the CFMEU. Watson’s report said more than half of the Victorian branch’s employees have left or been terminated.
A CFMEU spokesperson said “every bad actor named in the Watson report” had been removed.
But some former members, who declined to speak publicly citing fears of consequences for interfering with the union’s administration, say the clean-out will do little to address deeper, structural problems in the construction industry.
They argue the very nature of major government projects – where the state appoints a head contractor, who then subcontracts work to dozens of firms, sometimes up to 100 on a single site – leads to a lack of accountability.
Within Labor’s caucus there are calls to curb subcontracting, introduce character tests and strengthen enforcement on sites.
One MP said the rampant use of subcontracting allows companies to “avoid responsibility” and “paying proper wages and conditions” while “opening the door to poor behaviour and standards”.
Another was sceptical reform would rid sites of “gangsters”. “Once you let the fox into the henhouse, it’s very hard to get them out,” the MP said.
There are also calls to reform integrity agencies. On Wednesday, the state’s integrity agencies also issued a rare joint statement calling for more transparent funding.
The Greens, backed by the opposition, tried to amend government legislation on Thursday to introduce “follow the dollar laws” to allow Ibac to trace public money through major projects. The government delayed a vote but says it’s considering both reforms.
The opposition is demanding a royal commission, a move some in Labor quietly support, though others warn it would anger unions that helped elect them.
All 10 MPs Guardian Australia spoke to for this story, whom requested anonymity so they could speak freely, said Allan’s leadership is safe for now because Labor’s right faction doesn’t have the numbers to challenge her. However, they warned that her position would become precarious if her own left faction began to withdraw support should negative headlines continue and her polling deteriorate further.
For ordinary CFMEU members like Sam and Kelly, though, work continues as usual. As Watson himself noted: “There are over 30,000 members of the Victorian CFMEU and 99% of them are honest men and women working hard in a difficult and sometimes dangerous workplace.”
