- Follow live updates: ALP leadership showdown
As Jacinta Allan bid farewell to the job she has held for the past 1036 days, she used her final speech as Victoria’s premier to highlight her government’s achievements: tougher bail laws, a budget back in surplus, free public transport and improvements in women’s health.
But as she emphasised Labor’s record upgrading the state’s infrastructure, Allan remained defiant about the corruption scandal that has plagued those same Big Build projects, even as some of her colleagues publicly moved to call for a royal commission.
“We’ve removed 92 level crossings, finished the West Gate Tunnel. We’re building the North East Link and the Suburban Rail Loop, and then there’s the Metro Tunnel,” she told reporters.
“Not too many people get to see a project of this size and scale through from the start to the end. I am so goddamn proud of it.”
Ben Carroll, who is set to be Victoria’s new premier, is expected to announce a royal commission into the scandal surrounding the Big Build and the CFMEU as one of his first acts. Several Labor ministers pressed for such an inquiry during a tense cabinet meeting on Monday, and then did so publicly on Tuesday morning before Allan’s resignation.
In her statement to reporters, Allan did not mention the revelations in The Age that the scandal-plagued construction union inflated the cost of the government’s signature projects, delayed construction, and employed criminals, including bikies, to work on them.
Forced from office in large part because of her refusal to call a royal commission into the Building Bad scandal, Allan intimated that Victorians were benefiting from completed projects without focusing on the corrupt conduct on building sites during their construction.
“The Liberals opposed them,” she said. “Now they’re trying to rewrite history again by saying they’re tainted ... Victorians won’t buy that.
“They just want to see a doctor sooner, enrol a child easier [sic], and get home from work faster.”
Despite growing calls for a royal commission from the opposition, the nation’s top crime fighters, anti-corruption experts, the public and even her own party, Allan had in recent weeks remained steadfast in her opposition, including in a plea she made directly to Age readers.
She wrote that a previous royal commission focused on the CFMEU and other trade unions, conducted by former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, led to only one criminal conviction and failed to produce cultural change.
“If the goal is another report, another royal commission will deliver one,” she wrote. “If the goal is changing behaviour on worksites, changing the culture is the answer. Ask someone working on a construction site today, and they’ll tell you it is changing.”
More on the leadership spill:Inside story: After an icy meeting, she still had hope. Then came a second knock at the door
Leaked secret report: Allan was warned years ago about Big Build corruption
Comment: Who on earth can you vote for in this state?
The alternative: Ben Carroll’s journey from Kmart to the precipice of power