A secret briefing to Premier Jacinta Allan reveals her most senior advisers sought to warn her in writing in June 2023 that the Big Build she was overseeing as minister was being taken over by a lawless CFMEU, that this could cause major blowouts, and, bikies and criminals had reportedly infiltrated taxpayer-funded projects.

The emergence of the report marked “strictly confidential and cabinet in confidence” and addressed to Allan comes as she fights for her political life and shows Labor’s top infrastructure officials knew far more about Big Build corruption— and the consequences of her failure to act on it— than has ever been publicly revealed.

The government’s response to CFMEU corruption has been the defining issue as Allan battles to save her leadership, with her main rival, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, pledging to overturn her refusal to hold a royal commission.

Police Minister Anthony Carbines and Transport Infrastructure Minister Gabrielle Williams, who were among MPs to lead a delegation to tell Allan she has lost the support of caucus, argued in favour of a royal commission in Monday’s showdown cabinet meeting.

The leaked report shows the four top public servants who signed off on the June 2023 document sought to warn Allan about the problem a year before it was revealed in the media, immediately becoming one of the most serious scandals in Victorian history.

The document, which is addressed to Allan but does not bear her signature, is dated June 21, 2023, and was signed off by four high-ranking infrastructure and transport public servants.

The document also notes that Allan had been apprised of criminal and bikie infiltration of the government’s signature $109 billion infrastructure program.

“You have been separately briefed on actions proposed to deal with these matters, namely the referral of the matters to Victoria Police,” it says.

An official source confirmed on Monday morning that Allan had been briefed on the report’s contents.

In response to the emergence of the file, Allan claimed she had no knowledge of it and that claims to the contrary were false.

The premier was “not aware of this brief” and “to say otherwise is a lie”, her spokesperson said on Monday afternoon.

The premier’s insistence she had never seen the file raises its own questions, including whether there was a breakdown in the government’s internal reporting structure that may have meant Allan was not told of the document’s explosive contents.

The report also pierces Allan’s repeated claim that the CFMEU-enabled corrupting of the Big Build did not risk significant cost blowouts for taxpayers.

In contrast, the file warns that the CFMEU’s “concerning behaviour has the potential to significantly impact project costs and schedule” across the Big Build if it was not addressed.

The 2023 report described how a lawless CFMEU was driving an industrial relations environment on the Big Build that was not only “highly challenging” but “having a bearing on project costs, program, productivity and culture”.

Allan’s officials also describe how they had learnt during internal discussions of “potential criminal elements (for example outlaw motorcycle club members and convicted criminals) being present” across Big Build worksites.

It was only over a year later, in July 2024, that Victorians learnt that these warnings had not been adequately heeded by the Allan government, when The Age’s Building Bad series revealed how the Big Build was infested with corrupt union officials, bikies and gangland figures.

The Age has also recently reported how, in June 2022, Allan’s office is accused of helping the CFMEU take over a key Big Build rail site, a move that ultimately led to an allegedly crooked labour hire company being installed at considerable extra cost to taxpayers.

Over two years, the Building Bad series has also exposed a range of other disturbing revelations, including how almost every bikie gang in the state placed their members and associates on Labor’s signature infrastructure projects; how a company ultimately bankrolled by taxpayers and set up to employ women on the Big Build was run by a male drug trafficker and a second man with convictions for violence against women; and how the Metro Tunnel consortium has blamed the government for forcing it to agree to CFMEU demands that it claimed cost it $200 million in extra labour hire costs.

The June 2023 document shows that public servants sought to give Allan a summation of much of the Big Build wrongdoing in a file signed by Victoria’s chief infrastructure public servant, Kevin Devlin, and three of his fellow high-ranking officials.

Ir describes how the Big Build was hosting serious wrongdoing including the “pressuring of construction contractors, including through intimidatory tactics, to agree to … additional and/or excess site staffing”.

CFMEU officials also forced contractors on large rail and road projects to hire “particular persons and companies, in order to avoid industrial disputation”.

Mega-projects were also being stalled because the CFMEU, rather than the state government and its contracting partners, were dictating the “rosters and arrangements” for project employees, “leading to program delays” during vital stages of rail and road builds.

The secret document said the CFMEU’s Big Build takeover had led to “an increased proliferation of full-time, non-working union delegates and Health and Safety Representatives (HRs), with some recent appointments having limited construction experience”.

The briefing also sought to warn Allan the union had weaponised safety issues to increase its power on the Big Build because Victoria’s workplace safety regulator was missing in action, describing the “concern that industrial issues are erroneously being portrayed as safety issues, with little engagement or assistance provided by WorkSafe”.

As the union ran riot on the projects Allan was overseeing as minister, her advisers said there was “an increase in the prevalence of inappropriate requests for higher shift/leave loading and allowances beyond the relevant EBA”.

Some workers were pocketing large pay packets off the back of CFMEU pressure, they said, as the union was also driving “an increase in the prevalence of threats of unprotected industrial action”.

The situation was worsened because of the “increasingly apparent lack of skills and/or experience in industrial relations management amongst contractors and subcontractors” being paid by Victorians to build Labor’s new roads and rail projects.

If the government failed to act, the officials warned in the document, the situation could worsen.

“If contractors are unable (for example, through a lack of viable legal avenues), or unwilling (for example, through the impacts of intimidatory tactics), to actively resist unlawful or inappropriate industrial pressure, the resultant lack of control is likely to pave the way for the proliferation of concerning behaviour”, the briefing says.

In response to the CFMEU’s Big Build takeover, the Major Transport Infrastructure Agency said in the briefing it was “developing an industrial relations strategic options document” and had also urged Allan to call in the police.

Allan has previously disclosed she did refer matters to police, but never specified what they were or explained why police took no action until the Building Bad series broke in mid-2024 and, even then, did not launch a dedicated taskforce until a year later.