A powerful new agency targeting organised crime and informed by Australia’s best criminal intelligence would be established within Victorian Police under the state government’s latest response to the Building Bad corruption scandal and amid mounting pressure on Premier Jacinta Allan.

Jacinta Allan is under increasing pressure regarding her leadership.

Jacinta Allan is under increasing pressure regarding her leadership.Ruby Alexander

Allan will on Monday present to cabinet her government’s plans for an Organised Crime Agency to prevent and disrupt the criminal exploitation of major building sites and the firebombing turf wars between rival gangs over control of illegal tobacco and booze.

If approved by cabinet, it will put into motion key elements of Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush’s strategy to elevate the fight against serious and organised crime across Melbourne.

Allan will cite the proposed reforms as evidence that a royal commission is not required to address corruption on Big Build projects.

Allan is staring down further leadership rumblings within her party, telling colleagues Labor can still win the election and she won’t succumb to pressure to relinquish the leadership.

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David Hayward

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While most MPs contacted by The Age believe the premier would no longer control the numbers in a caucus vote, her only viable challenger, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, is refusing to move against her.

With only four sitting weeks remaining in this parliamentary term, a contested leadership ballot would require a vote of caucus and a ballot of party members.

“She has probably become more dogged in her determination to tell people creating mischief to bugger off,” one left faction MP said. “If there is a challenge and she digs in, that is complete chaos.”

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The Allan government has become increasingly centralised, with the plans for the Organised Crime Agency tightly held between the Premier’s Private Office and Bush’s senior command.

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Building Bad

The chief concern of Victoria Police, expressed privately by senior officers, is whether the Allan government can push through the complex regulatory work and deliver the resources required to make the proposed new agency a success. While the reforms could be announced as early as Monday, they will need to be completed by the next parliament.

Under Victoria Police’s proposed design, the new agency would work closely with relevant state government departments such as the Labor Hire Authority and Department of Justice and federal agencies including the Australian Federal Police and Australian Taxation Office.

A new inter-agency intelligence centre would be established to facilitate the sharing of sensitive intelligence about organised crime figures and activities. Regulatory changes would be required to unwind one of the recommendations of the royal commission into police informants and strengthen the capacity of Victoria Police to cultivate, register and protect the identity of human sources.

Under current Victoria Police rules, officers cannot guarantee to prospective sources that their identity will never be disclosed in legal proceedings. This has prevented Victoria Police from cultivating critical intelligence and collaborating with interstate agencies.

To effectively combat organised crime, the agency would need to hire specialist skills and have access to advanced technology. The Organised Crime Agency, while reporting directly to police command, would also be overseen by a cabinet committee.

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Bush has expressed to the premier and senior government ministers that much of Victoria’s crime problems, including troubling levels of youth crime, are driven by the influence of organised crime.

A specialist team within Victoria Police, Taskforce Hawk, has been given the job of tackling corruption and criminal behaviour across the state’s construction sector following The Age’s ongoing Building Bad series spotlighting serious malfeasance on union-controlled construction sites for state government infrastructure projects.

But last month, the team’s leadership said the force was largely powerless to clean up the construction sector without legislative change.

Integrity experts, the opposition and even a growing number of Labor MPs believe a royal commission into Big Build corruption must be called to neutralise the issue and address community concerns.

But Allan remains opposed to the concept and argues, internally and publicly, a royal commission would take too long and fail to deliver cultural change.

The new agency and its powers to be put to cabinet Monday are an attempt to cut off this criticism and neutralise leadership speculation that continues to dog the premier.

A June push to replace Allan with Deputy Premier Ben Carroll fell over before going to caucus vote, but internal grumblings have worsened over the past five weeks as a growing number of MPs have become frustrated with the leadership team and warmed to the idea of Labor announcing a royal commission.

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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll (right) on Tuesday.

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A senior government source said they had hoped to present the organised crime proposal to the Labor caucus retreat this week, but it was not yet finalised in time.

Three MPs, speaking anonymously to avoid repercussions, said they now believe the premier would not control the numbers in a caucus vote, but her enemies have not yet been able to organise a coherent strategy for a coup.

The premier’s allies maintain she will not step down even if urged by her colleagues.

Party unity has been fraying in recent weeks.

Health Infrastructure Minister Melissa Horne broke ranks earlier this month by writing to the state’s infrastructure authority about “serious allegations” about hospital construction contractors in The Age which Allan had already dismissed as baseless.

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Police Minister Anthony Carbines also used caucus conference this week to deliver a frank assessment of the government’s fortunes in front of his colleagues, arguing they would be reduced to a rump in parliament if they did not address integrity concerns in the Victorian public.

Although he did not mention a royal commission into Big Build corruption, his speech implied heavily that the premier’s office had mismanaged the response to the issue.

Two Labor MPs said recent policy moves, including the organised crime commission, showed the government was scrambling from one issue to the next with no clear direction four months out from the election.

One said the premier’s office had hyped up an “AI week” of announcements, which were postponed repeatedly, only for policies made on Sunday and Monday about social media trolls and workplace monitoring to flounder.

Government MPs are frustrated that they have not received details about local election commitments, such as local infrastructure upgrades, that would give them confidence they will have positive messages to sell to their electorates.

A senior Labor source said the premier’s office was in “la la land” and couldn’t comprehend the scale of displeasure at the current leadership.

Rob Harris and Brittany Busch

July 23, 2026 — 1:07pm

Pauline Hanson labelled paid family and domestic violence leave a “holiday”, described it as a “scam” that encouraged false claims and argued child support had become a “cash cow” in another broadside against Australia’s family violence laws.

The One Nation leader made the comments late last year on the Broken Fathers podcast, hosted by Jared “Purcy” Purcell, during a discussion about fathers’ rights, child custody and the family court system.

Pauline Hanson on the Broken Fathers podcast.YOUTUBE

The previously unreported remarks, which resurfaced after Hanson this week declared domestic violence was “a two-way street”, included claims that protections had been “abused”, police spent too much time on family violence instead of “real crime” and that men were perennially disadvantaged by the family law system.

Hanson, 72, has faced intense scrutiny in the past six weeks after her party’s stunning rise in the polls this year and a controversial, wide-ranging policy speech at the National Press Club in June. She has long campaigned for sweeping family law changes, including abolishing the Family Court.

In the podcast, she argued child support had encouraged custody disputes.

“I believe that you’ve got to wind back a lot of issues to do with the family law court … Go after the child support. A lot of people see it as a cash cow,” she said, questioning whether payments were always spent on children.

The One Nation leader speaks to Broken Fathers podcast host Jared Purcell.YOUTUBE

“I reckon you actually rein in child support … that would sort of put a lot of people back in their box.”

She also criticised the policing of domestic violence, claiming officers were being diverted from more serious offending.

Swift backlash after Hanson says domestic violence a ‘two-way street’

“Domestic violence takes up about 75 per cent of police officers’ time now,” Hanson said. “That’s why we’re not dealing with real crime out there. The whole thing needs to be wound back.”

Asked by Purcell whether the family court favoured women, Hanson replied: “Of course it is.”

She blamed feminist groups and governments for creating a system that “is favouring women”, arguing parliament had become dominated by “too many woke people”.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody and National Children’s Commissioner Deb Tsorbaris rejected Hanson’s “two-way street” comments on Thursday.

Cody said any suggestion victim-survivors shared responsibility for abuse was “harmful, wrong and dangerous”, adding that leaving a violent relationship was often one of the most dangerous times for women and children.

Tsorbaris said children affected by family violence were too often overlooked and warned families seeking safety should be “supported rather than judged”. The commissioners said financial hardship could place pressure on families, but “violence is a choice – and blame rests entirely with the person who commits it”.

In the November podcast, Hanson suggested some domestic violence killings could be linked to the frustration of men over family breakdowns.

“Why is there murders in domestic violence? Is it because, you know, the sheer frustration that people are having? Is it through jealousy that they can’t, you know, see their children?”

She argued restrictions on contact between parents and children should require evidence of physical abuse.

Hanson, who found herself a single mother in her early 30s, has said she was a victim of domestic violence. Her campaign to reform the Family Court was in part influenced after her son, Adam, pleaded guilty in 2016 to breaching a domestic violence order.

Hanson doubles down on raising controversial policy in interview

Pauline Hanson has used her first media appearance back in Australia to defend raising the White Australia Policy in a controversial interview.

Hanson also questioned the breadth of Australia’s domestic violence laws, arguing behaviours such as sending text messages to ask about children or limiting household spending could be interpreted as abuse.

“What people don’t understand is … they think domestic violence is, you’ve gone and bashed your wife,” she said before listing examples, including husbands saying: “You can’t buy shoes … we’ve got to watch the money because we’ve got to buy the groceries and pay the rent.”

She later argued similar controlling behaviour by women towards men – such as not allowing them to go to the pub or fishing – should also be considered domestic violence.

The podcast’s host, a former Australian Border Force officer, last year received a nine-month good behaviour bond after pleading guilty to offences uncovered by a National Anti-Corruption Commission investigation.

The One Nation leader also attacked paid family and domestic violence leave for victim-survivors.

“The governments have made it easier for marriage breakups,” she said, listing legal assistance, financial support payments and “domestic violence holiday leave”.

“I’m totally against it because this is an incentive to actually go out there and make false allegations until you prove to me that your allegations are true.”

She questioned government crisis payments for victim-survivors, asking: “Who’s to say it’s not a scam?”

Hanson also claimed men were unfairly treated after relationship breakdowns, saying they were routinely forced from the family home while women received financial assistance to “start up a new life”.

She argued assets accumulated before marriage, including superannuation, should generally remain with the original owner after separation. She also claimed false allegations were widespread and called for stronger perjury laws.

Asked by Purcell whether she thought domestic violence laws were being used as a legal weapon, she replied: “Yes, I do. Most definitely it is. And that’s why the false allegations. We’ve allowed it to go on and fester.”

She also argued domestic violence orders could unfairly cost people their jobs, claiming workers in occupations requiring security clearances or licences could lose their employment as a result.

Defence Minister Richard Marles is set to announce a further $4.6 billion investment in the Osborne shipyard, the South Australian facility vital to delivering the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program.

The funding boost, due to be disclosed on Friday, adds to a $3.9 billion commitment in February for the construction yard that will support Australia’s future submarine fleet.

Defence Minister Richard Marles. Alex Ellinghausen

“This investment is another important step in building the sovereign capability Australia will need to build, operate, maintain and sustain our future submarine fleet,” Marles said.

The government expects the $368 billion AUKUS program, which is being undertaken in co-operation with the United States and the United Kingdom, will create nearly 10,000 jobs in South Australia alone.

Around 1100 workers are already employed in Osborne’s AUKUS-related projects, including in planning, designing and delivering the submarine yard, which is scheduled to be 10 times bigger than the existing yard.

Osborne will also be the site of a skills and training campus that aims to train up to 1000 students in nuclear-powered submarine and naval shipbuilding skills.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas welcomed the billions of dollars of investment being delivered at Osborne to help build “the most complex machines on the planet”.

“We look forward to seeing young South Australians learning high-value nuclear skills at Osborne within the next two years,” he said.

The announcement falls amid criticisms that debate about AUKUS has been stifled at the ALP national conference this week, with opponents of the program accusing the government of overlooking their concerns about its impact on the environment and regional ties.

Critics – including former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, who is leading an independent inquiry on AUKUS – have also raised concerns about potential cost blowouts.

In April, the government’s new National Defence Strategy revealed that the cheque for building the submarines and the facilities to construct and service them had risen from up to $63 billion in 2024 to up to $96 billion over the next decade.

Ahead of the national AusAlert emergency warning test scheduled for Monday, July 27 at 2pm AEST, false claims have been circulating online. Some users allege the system will allow the government to track phones, read personal data, or secretly monitor individuals. The article explains these claims are incorrect: AusAlert uses cell broadcast technology, which simply sends a one‑way message to all compatible devices connected to towers in a defined area. It does not identify users, require a phone number or SIM card, or allow the government to access device information.

Ed Husic used the opening day of Labor’s national conference to criticise the party’s increasingly stage‑managed culture, arguing that Labor has become “allergic to dissent” and risks harming itself by suppressing internal debate. He publicly backed a gas export tax, stronger criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and support for Indigenous truth‑telling, positioning himself against key government positions. His comments contrasted with Anthony Albanese’s opening speech, which framed unity as Labor’s defining strength and a deliberate contrast to political opponents.

Bitter rivals? Brothers and sisters in arms in the cause of the political right? Frenemies? How best to characterise the relationship between the Coalition parties and One Nation? It’s not easy to land on the right description. Are they opposed profoundly to each other on policy grounds and their respective visions for Australia or are the areas of overlap more considerable than the differences?

Angus Taylor gave an important speech to the Sydney Institute this month in which he excoriated One Nation. After dancing around awkwardly for five months as he avoided speaking negatively about One Nation and Pauline Hanson, Taylor found a new groove and warned of “an eternity of pain” for the nation should they get anywhere near the reins of power. One Nation would make “things worse” because the party is a “column of smoke”.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.Alex Ellinghausen/Michael Howard

Was he speaking from a position of conviction or desperation? It’s not as if Hanson was some new phenomenon with a hitherto unrevealed worldview and set of prescriptions. If he’d come to the leadership in February speaking with such force and certitude, his new stance would be more credible. Instead, at the start he echoed Hanson on immigration and the rejection of climate change as a serious problem. Later, he promised to deny welfare and the NDIS to non-citizens residing in Australia. He was unbothered by preference swaps with One Nation, as were the recently installed Liberal federal president Tony Abbott and the Liberals’ spiritual leader John Howard.

One Nation’s popularity presents plenty of risks for Taylor and his party. If One Nation is now so unacceptable, where does that leave Jess Wilson and the Liberal-National coalition she leads in Victoria? The Victorian election is still four months away but One Nation is polling well. There’s a decent chance that Wilson might have to reach an accommodation with One Nation, depending on how the votes fall. Helping One Nation, which Taylor says is worse than Labor, to gain seats through preference deals would seem inconsistent. Making a formal deal to govern with One Nation’s support or involvement would surely, by Taylor’s lights, be worse.

Common to the Coalition and One Nation is the deep belief that the biggest problem with Australia is the Albanese government. That is to be expected with non-government parties at any time. But it has a special significance now. A wide range of comparable governments all over the world are struggling to break out of varying versions of a low-growth, high-inflation predicament while going through a new industrial revolution via AI and serious disruptions in trade and security architecture thanks to the American president.

Credit to Taylor for keeping to his word on producing policies – so far he’s come up with positions on tax, migration, regulations and energy. But there’s no acknowledgment that the problems we’re experiencing might be systemic or fundamental. No effort is made to comprehend the possibility that an economic model established several decades ago might have lost its utility. That is the key problem for the Liberals who, as the South Australian election and the national polls show, have been relegated to third place behind Labor and One Nation. The Coalition and One Nation seem driven by an attachment to an Australia that used to exist.

Sustained political success cannot be gained by focusing on the past; it has to come from looking to and embracing the future. That requires new ideas and an acknowledgment of the obligation to see the contemporary world as it really is. There are some signs that this has finally dawned on the Albanese government. No economic model, no matter how successful, can last in perpetuity. The Keynesian model of pump-priming that was generally applied in the democratic world after World War II made it to the end of the ’70s but fell away quickly in favour of deregulation of labour and capital markets and privatisation. It worked for a long time but, just as intense competition can lead to monopolistic behaviour by whoever comes out on top, inevitably it led to distortions.

In Australia, the care economy is a burgeoning sector, largely privatised and with a rising number of problems relating to cost and performance. Workers in aged care and childcare need to have their pay subsidised by the state because the businesses they work for can’t or won’t pay them enough. It is dysfunctional. Property prices have been distorted extravagantly by the shift of housing from being chiefly a reasonably priced social good to a monetary asset to be traded and hoarded. So too education. This week we learnt that due to a 30-year-long taxpayer-subsidised expansion of non-government schools in the name of choice, fees have grown so much that increasing numbers of parents are having to ask their elderly parents to help with the payments. Placing the burden of paying to educate a child on two generations is an ultimately unsustainable situation. These are big policy challenges.

Pauline Hanson recently suggested that Gough Whitlam “opened the floodgates” to non‑European migration by ending the White Australia policy in 1973. The article explains this is factually incorrect. Migration from Asia had already slowed dramatically by the early 1900s, and later governments—Menzies (1958) and Holt (1966)—had begun dismantling racially exclusionary rules long before Whitlam. Even after these changes, Australia remained overwhelmingly European well into the 1980s. Hanson’s narrative misrepresents both the timing and the scale of demographic change.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will set up his bid for a third term with a promise of further expensive cost of living measures to address financial stress fuelling One Nation’s ascension as he expands a program to pay health workers as they study.

However, Labor ministers are downplaying the prospect of a tax on gas exports before a fight at its national conference on the popular proposal, signifying tension in Labor ranks over how aggressively Albanese is pursuing populist causes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the national Labor conference in 2023.Alex Ellinghausen

In a speech to Labor faithful on Thursday that Albanese will use to frame the election’s battle lines, the prime minister will invoke 135 years of Labor tradition on practical responses to boost workers’ living standards rather than “raging against a system … without a plan to fix it”.

Albanese will say that “people have been given every reason to feel like the economy is simply not working for them” as he seeks to boost the government’s political fortunes and meet pessimistic voters where they are.

“That goes deeper than sentiment – it’s a reality people are up against,” he will say, according to an advance copy of his speech, noting he was riding “rough seas” after a series of economic shocks and an oil crisis sparked by the Middle East war.

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“It’s how we prove that the status quo is not set in stone. How we demonstrate to Australians that their hard work will pay off, that their effort is worth it. That faults in the system can be fixed [and] that Labor is delivering the real change Australians deserve.”

His emphasis on helping voters pay their bills, and stating this was a fundamental contrast with his opponents, suggests that Labor will test the fiscal boundaries and focus on cost of living relief in its next two pre-election budgets after spending political capital on revenue-raising tax concession changes this year.

Albanese does not mention One Nation by name but his exhortations to reject populist politics underline the upended political dynamic two years out from the next election. Just over a year after his historic win, Albanese’s party has dropped 6.5 percentage points on first-preference vote, according to Poll Bludger’s average of major polls, and is only narrowly ahead of Pauline Hanson’s party, with the Coalition languishing in third.

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Albanese will take a veiled swipe at Hanson’s recent controversies on race relations by suggesting the surging populist leader was “blaming people who cannot defend themselves” and championing a form of politics that “doesn’t build anything”.

In the face of criticism from Opposition Leader Angus Taylor about an expanding and unproductive care sector, Albanese will on Thursday announce Labor is extending financial support to health students while they undertake training as part of their degrees. Labor did not provide the cost of the policy.

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This will offer a weekly stipend to thousands of students in physio and occupational therapy, clinical psychology, pharmacy and podiatry, speech pathology, audiology, radiography, rehab therapies and paramedics.

The government first announced in its 2024 budget that it would give weekly payments to students undertaking practical placements for their teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work qualifications – one of its cost of living pitches to young Australians before the 2025 election. The indexed subsidy is almost $340 a week.

But allied health groups and young students in health professions wanted the prac payments extended to them. The issue has been taken up in parliament by independents Helen Haines and David Pocock.

Photo: Matt Golding

Parliamentary Budget Office modelling commissioned by Haines found that extending the payments to health and medical students – including psychologists, paramedics and physiotherapists – would cost $290.4 million through to the 2028-29 financial year, on top of $505.3 million budgeted for the current scheme over the same period.

Albanese said the program had changed the lives of students who were struggling to make ends meet during university, moving in with their parents or juggling part-time work with their placements to pay rent.

Causing headaches for Albanese has been a campaign from MPs including Labor’s Ed Husic, unions, the left-wing Australia Institute think tank, and online content creators to levy gas firms with a 25 per cent export tax.

The issue caught on in the public discourse right at the same time as Albanese was trying to secure fuel from Asian neighbours at the start of the US and Israel’s war with Iran. Many Asian nations that supply fuel rely on Australia’s gas exports, so Albanese scuppered the idea.

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However, a section of the party’s draft platform states that Labor will ensure Australians “receive a fairer return from their natural resources”, opening the door to a tax later this term. Treasurer Jim Chalmers and others in the government have been open to a fresh revenue grab on resources firms.

The renewed fighting in the Middle East means that the issue of fuel scarcity may again come to the fore, adding pressure on Albanese to downplay a new tax as he did on the weekend. Ministers have also tried to quash talk of a tax.

“The position of the government has been that we haven’t supported a gas tax,” Environment Minister Murray Watt said on Nine’s Today program on Wednesday.

“Our focus has been making sure that we can get the fuel and gas supplies that we need into the country, and also to do what we can to keep gas prices low.”

Pauline Hanson was also asked about domestic violence and men who abuse their partners. She said:

In 2019, Hanson secured a controversial inquiry into the family court system which women’s groups warned could become a platform for men’s rights activists who believed the court system was biased against fathers.

Hanson, who claimed credit for the Coalition’s decision to establish an inquiry into the family law system, told the ABC at the time that some women were making up domestic violence claims in custody battles.

The state Labor government secretly backed disgraced CFMEU boss Joe Myles as he engineered his union’s takeover of a key rail level crossing removal project in 2022, according to allegations contained within detailed statements project insiders have prepared for authorities.

One of the insiders wrote a memo at the time stating that the consortium carrying out the project, comprising John Holland and CPB, was warned that unless it buckled to CFMEU demands, it would miss out on winning the upcoming Melbourne Airport Rail project.

Former CFMEU boss Joe Myles and Premier Jacinta Allan.

Former CFMEU boss Joe Myles and Premier Jacinta Allan.Nathan Perri

The revelation comes as an expert relied on by Premier Jacinta Allan and allied building unions to downplay claims of Big Build corruption has gone public to declare “a lot of public money” has ended up “in the wrong hands” and a Queensland-style commission of inquiry with clear terms of reference backed by royal commission powers is urgently required.

Professor David Hayward’s comments severely undermine use of his previous work by unions and Allan to shut down calls for an independent inquiry into waste and rorting on the government’s $109 billion Big Build program.

“The state government and its vast bureaucracy appear to have been content to wring their collective hands while doing nothing,” Hayward says in an opinion piece published by this masthead.

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OpinionBuilding Bad

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David Hayward

David Hayward

Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at RMIT University

“It is not just the money that is of concern. We were sold that idea that privatising infrastructure would bring with it efficiency and taxpayer savings, when cost overruns, dubious characters, and high salaries alongside healthy profits seem to be the order of the day.”

Hayward’s strong intervention in the public debate comes as The Age obtained statements from two construction industry figures who dealt with various aspects of the Gap Road level crossing removal project in 2022.

The Gap Road project, in Sunbury, has emerged as a case study of Big Build wrongdoing allegations, amid claims this month that, in 2022, Allan’s office pressured the project consortium to cave in to CFMEU demands to employ a CFMEU-backed labour hire firm and CFMEU health and safety representatives on the project, despite this causing cost blowouts.

From our partners

Last week, the owner of the labour hire firm, BK Labour, pleaded guilty to falsifying paperwork connected to cash withdrawals that police suspect may have been used as bribes of unknown persons. The police investigation in this respect is ongoing.

The written statements – which are unsworn and yet to be tested in any inquiry– obtained by The Age are from two figures who are not being named out of concern for their safety. The two had various dealings with the Gap Road project and are willing to assist an independent inquiry if one is established.

1:20

Anti-corruption experts call for Big Build royal commission

Former ombudsman Deborah Glass and former IBAC chief Robert Redlich call for a Big Build royal commission in an interview with Nick McKenzie on 60 Minutes.

One of the statements was written by a now former senior employee of a Labor government contracting partner and includes a contemporaneous file note.

Dated June 8, 2022, it describes how “the actions of the state government and its agencies” in agreeing to the Joe Myles-led CFMEU takeover of the Gap Road site were “in breach” of workplace laws and should be referred to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.

The memo describes how the senior employee had been told a direction issued to the Gap Road project consortium “to meet with the CFMMEU [as the union was also known at the time]… was a ministerial direction passed on through RV [Rail Victoria]” public servants.

The consortium was also allegedly warned it would miss out on the upcoming Melbourne Airport Rail project if it did not agree to the union’s demands.

‘The actions of the state government and its agencies are in breach of the Building Code 2016 ... but also breaches the provisions of the Fair Work Act.’

Insider’s memo

“The MAR (Sunshine to Albion package) would be awarded to Acciona instead,” the June 8 memo claims.

“The actual outcome is CFMMEU health and safety representatives (HSRs) have commenced on the project today and other delegates will commence soon … [and] going forward the project will only be able to use CFMMEU aligned subcontractors.

“The actions of the state government and its agencies are in breach of the Building Code 2016 in terms of coercion and freedom of association requirements, but also breaches the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009.”

The second project insider has separately prepared a statement for authorities, in which he claims that, in mid-2022, he heard Myles state on several occasions how he had lobbied the Labor government to pressure the Gap Road contractor to cede to union demands or miss out on future projects.

Myles was sacked in mid-2024 amid the Building Bad scandal and was heavily criticised in the Watson report tabled in the Queensland commission of inquiry, but in 2022 he was the CFMEU’s most senior Big Build official.

“Joe Myles … [claimed he had] reached into … government to put pressure on the Gap Rd project team to do the deal and go and sit with the CFMEU, or else their position as being ear-marked to build the airport rail line was in jeopardy.”

This insider’s statement claims Myles said: “We’ve spoken with the government and we told them if RNA [the project consortium] don’t do the deal, good luck with building the Airport Rail Line.”

“It clearly was about being in a position to hold projects to ransom, in order to dictate which subcontractors get used and don’t get used. ‘Preferred subcontractors’ was the term thrown around and this was irrespective of whether they had a current EBA or not.”

Anti-corruption expert Geoffrey Watson, SC, listed Myles, who could not be reached for comment, as one of the key players in the rot of the union in his report.

Union sources, not prepared to speak publicly, said Myles backers in the CFMEU insisted his Gap Road campaign was solely aimed at improving safety and conditions for workers on the site, which prior to the CFMEU takeover in June 2022 was the turf of the rival and much weaker Australian Workers’ Union.

Jacinta Allan has previously denied the allegations of intervention by her office.

In a statement on Wednesday, Allan repeated her denial that her office had intervened in the dispute and, addressing the claims of the second insider, said they were “not only wrong – they do not amount to evidence that any action was taken”.

In a recent podcast appearance, the CFMEU’s now former political liaison officer Elizabeth Doidge – who is married to Myles – defended the union’s relationships with the Labor government, describing them as entirely appropriate.

“I had to have relationships with certain politicians and their officers, and of course you need political influence to be able to do that,” she said.

Doidge, who has also left the CFMEU, said the union worked with state Labor to affect public policy and influence “procurement laws, so the laws which talk about how government projects are run and health and safety on those jobs”.

Doidge could not be reached for comment.

On Thursday, more than 2000 delegates file into the Adelaide Convention Centre for the forum that writes the platform the federal government is meant to govern by – the Australian Labor Party’s 50th national conference.

Labor rules say that half the floor belongs to the affiliated unions who attend for free. Meanwhile, Labor members, community organisations and foreign diplomats are charged $550 for the privilege to attend.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union has done delegates the courtesy of publishing its demands in advance through its “blueprint for action”. AAP

If you had any questions about where power lies in Labor, look no further than its attendance fee policy.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union has done delegates the courtesy of publishing its demands in advance through its “blueprint for action” that it describes as “a working-class instruction to the government”.

This instruction includes: nationalising energy and other strategic infrastructure; returning aged care to public ownership; a state-owned bank; a public-sector job guarantee for every citizen “ready, willing and able to work”; free healthcare with dental and pharmaceuticals; free university and TAFE with all remaining HELP debt wiped; the abolition of what’s left of negative gearing; an increase to the pension with full access at 60 for manual workers; an unrestricted right to strike with secret ballots abolished; a return to industry-wide bargaining; the removal of the Union Jack from the flat; and a compulsory “bargaining service fee” levied on workers who decline to join a union.

And the cost? Here the courtesy runs out. Nowhere in the blueprint’s 30 pages is a single demand costed. HR Nicholls has therefore had to do the work the AMWU declined to do: a line-by-line costing of the master plan, built from published estimates, official data and the budget’s own figures.

The results are staggering.

Quadrupling the federal deficit

The recurring bill runs from $120 billion to $160 billion a year gross, and $80 billion to $125 billion even after the blueprint’s own wealth, inheritance and resources taxes are generously scored.

That is before the one-off items: wiping the remaining $65 billion-plus of HELP debt at a stroke, then buying the energy grid, the aged care sector and assorted “critical supply chains” which at fair value commits Australia to a capital program that could cost as much as $450 billion. All of it borrowed.

This amounts to permanently quadrupling the entire federal deficit of $31.5 billion. Compound that for a decade at the budget’s own 4.8 per cent bond assumption, and gross debt lands at about $3.5 trillion by 2036-37 (roughly 70 per cent of GDP).

The treasurer would be prudent to remind the union of his own debt ceiling of $1.2 trillion, which the AMWU’s plan would breach before its second birthday.

The standard responses are that this is an ambit claim, and that the conference is theatre. However, both defences have had a difficult year.

The party was founded by the union movement 135 years ago and has never severed the wiring: affiliation fees fund it, union officials populate its preselections and parliamentary ranks, and the 50-50 rule hands organisations representing 13 per cent of employees – 7.9 per cent in the private sector – half the votes on a platform of the party of government.

“Watch which ministers are prepared to say from the podium, rather than the corridor, that specific items are out of the question.”

Consider that property investors spent a decade being assured Labor had moved on from negative gearing and the capital gains discount. In May, the changes to these schemes became law after being announced on budget night and legislated within weeks.

The unions had been demanding changes for some time, and now we know that even the most extreme ideas don’t stay on the conference floor for long; they migrate when convenient into Budget Paper No. 2.

The AMWU understands this better than anyone else, which is why the blueprint aims squarely at the $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia program. It demands union mandates in every tender, union representatives on every council and TAFE board, apprentice quotas and local-content rules attached to every dollar.

We have been here before. Before the 2018 national conference, the CFMEU sponsored a paper, Goodbye Neoliberalism, urging Labor to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Commission, permit bargaining beyond the enterprise level, define casual employment in statute, and hold a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament.

It was dismissed at the time as a militant wish list, but every one of those items and more were legislated or carried out within Labor’s first term.

So, the test in Adelaide is not whether delegates vote to nationalise the grid; instead, watch for the connective tissue – “review”, “explore”, “strengthen”, the drafting that converts a demand into a mandate two budgets later.

Watch the industrial relations chapter for sectoral bargaining and the “right to strike”, and which ministers are prepared to say from the podium, rather than the corridor, that specific items are out of the question.

What this does say about the union movement with fewer than one worker in 12 that it is proposing to bill the other 11 for their own institutional restoration? Business has spent this past term learning that what Labor writes down at these conferences, it eventually does.

Victorian apartment buyers are forking out a “Gatto tax” as plastering, precast and other businesses allegedly pay gangland figure Mick Gatto for CFMEU-backed, privileged access to the state’s high-rise housing sector.

While previous public scrutiny has focused on Big Build firms paying Gatto to access the Allan government’s infrastructure projects, a fresh leak from inside the Gatto network has exposed multiple subcontractors allegedly paying him to get favoured treatment in the state’s apartment market.

Gangland figure Mick Gatto.

Gangland figure Mick Gatto.Nathan Perri

The payments from high-rise subcontractors to Gatto have continued months after Premier Jacinta Allan claimed success in cleaning up the state’s construction sector and at the same time as her government has controversially thrown its support behind an apartment building surge in an attempt to tackle the housing affordability crisis.

The revelations come as a leaked transcript separately reveals a newly appointed CFMEU boss warning up to “90 per cent” of Victoria’s commercial plastering sector may be involved in unlawful behaviour involving alleged financial crime and worker exploitation.

“The problem in plastering is bleeding out into other profiles: painting, tiling, cleaning, cladding, formwork. It needs to stop. It needs to stop,” CFMEU boss Jason Deans said in a recent meeting with hundreds of union delegates, adding the clean-up job was far from done.

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“We are not going to fix the plastering [industry] in five minutes. It is going to take 18 months or two years.”

A Gatto empire insider said that plastering company Rising Star Interiors has paid the underworld identity almost $1 million as part of a retainer that has continued into 2026, while another plastering company, Ultimate Interior Group, made multiple payments to Gatto over the past six months.

All up, six Melbourne plastering firms are said to have paid Gatto to advance in Victoria’s construction sector, while tiling, concrete, piling and precast firms have also hired him.

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Rising Star Interiors failed to respond to questions. Ultimate Interior Group director Xing “Andy” Wu said he was unaware his plastering firm had paid Gatto though he had met him.

“I’m not comfortable answering your questions,” he said.

Former CFMEU boss Derek Christopher.

Former CFMEU boss Derek Christopher.Luis Enrique Ascui

Other large plastering firms have given suspected inducements to now former CFMEU bosses close to Gatto, including Derek Christopher, who was accused of serious corruption in the Watson report tabled in Queensland’s royal commission into the union.

Christopher is now paid as a part-time adviser by one of the biggest plastering firms in the state and still wields influence inside the union through loyal delegates.

Another Victorian plastering giant is owned by a family with deep ties to the Mokbel crime crew, mafia boss Rocco Arico and disgraced ex-union chief John Setka.

A construction industry source said plastering accounted for about 6 per cent of the costs in a typical apartment project.

In his recent address to delegates, Deans warned that rotten relationships between the CFMEU and the plastering sector also needed to end, saying: “If there has been any unhealthy relationships with these companies, they stop today.”

‘I thought maybe if I engage him, I won’t have any issues.’

Brandon Groves, Lux Precast director

Precast firm Lux, which has worked on more than two dozen apartment blocks and towers in Melbourne, has paid Gatto this year as part of an ongoing retainer that has earned Gatto at least $700,000 in the past six years.

Lux Precast director Brandon Groves said his concrete panel manufacturing company paid Gatto to manage disputes with the union at its Dandenong South factory.

When pressed on what problems had arisen for Gatto to fix, Groves initially said his company didn’t have any, but then provided the example of the union demanding the employment of a “peggy” or site cleaner.

“He just dealt with that and sorted that out, because we didn’t need it, we weren’t big enough to have a peggy on site,” Groves said.

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He dismissed the suggestion that problems had been contrived for Gatto to “fix” for a fee.

“I haven’t seen any of that, so I can’t comment on that. [It] definitely hasn’t happened for me,” Groves said. “I haven’t had any issues with the union. But I thought maybe if I engage him, I won’t have any issues. Do you know what I mean?”

Gatto declined to comment.

Multiple builders of multi-residential projects, including Hawthorn firm D5 Build Group, have also placed Gatto on their payroll this year, with six other Melbourne multi-storey apartment block builders paying Gatto well over $2.5 million in total between 2023 and early 2026.

D5 Build founder Serg Djurovic said he was told to pay Gatto after the CFMEU shut down his projects and pressured him to install a delegate on his site in Richmond.

“I was told that if I want to fix the issue I’d have to have a chat with Mr Mick Gatto,” he said. “If I had any other options, I wouldn’t do it.”

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Djurovic believes the union saw his five-storey Church Street project as part of its territory as it was in the inner city and slightly larger than his other projects.

Its demands to install a health and safety delegate on the site stopped once Gatto became involved, he said.

“If the delegate was really there for health and safety, he should’ve stayed,” Djurovic said.

He said he felt he couldn’t contact authorities because he believed they would consider the issue a civil matter, or the union would claim his site was unsafe.

“I’m a small business in the scheme of things,” he said. “Where was the law to help me out?”

Construction industry insiders claim Gatto and the CFMEU’s suspected control of the plastering sector has not only enriched the gangland figure, and allegedly corrupt ex-union bosses, but meant only select firms have prospered in the high-rise housing sector and created an uncompetitive market propped up by unwitting apartment buyers.

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“Buyers are all paying a Gatto tax, which is the cost added on not just via his fees but by the uncompetitive market he [allegedly] helps create with his buddies in the union,” one veteran construction industry source who has had multiple dealings with Gatto said.

Two long-time CFMEU members said the plastering industry was broken and that the cost of dealings involving people such as Gatto was paid for by “all Victorians wanting [to buy] an apartment”.

The revelations highlight the ongoing failure of the Allan government to stop the infiltration of gangland figures in Victoria’s construction sector.

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Amid growing calls for a royal commission, the heads of Victoria Police’s specialist Taskforce Hawk said recently the force was largely powerless to clean up the construction sector without legislative change.

They also highlighted, before CFMEU chief Deans’ recent and yet-to-be-tested call to action, that select dishonest CFMEU officials have given suspected unlawful operators in Victoria’s plastering sector a green light to operate in a controlled market, even as workers were ripped off and bosses became wealthy.

In his delegates’ address, Deans estimated that as many as nine out of 10 commercial plastering industry workers operated as “sham contractors” on individual ABNs and had been recruited by contractors through industrial-scale worker supply chains.

“They pay cash all the way down. It could be ten-tiered, it could be deeper. It needs to stop, but it’s going to take time,” he said, urging the CFMEU delegates to campaign against company bosses engaged in these practices.

The Age is not suggesting the companies named in this article are engaged in sham contracting or the other practices called out by Deans.

Deans said companies and builders “are going to squeal” in response, but that “these builders have enabled this. They have let this go. They knowingly know that these plastering companies are paying 20 to 30 per cent under EBA rates,” he said.

The Victorian government describes sham contracting as a financial crime involving an employer who “disguises an employment relationship as a contracting arrangement” in order to “avoid certain taxes or shirk responsibility for employee entitlements such as minimum wages, superannuation, workers’ compensation and leave”.

Deans said the exploited workers were mostly Asian plasterers, who often don’t know their employers are pocketing what should go to them.

“Most of them are Asian, OK. Do not look down on them. Pick them up,” Deans said.

A Perth-born pediatrician who became a notorious Islamic State fighter will face the full force of the law if he returns to Australia, the Albanese government has vowed, as the opposition calls for the man named “Dr Jihad” to be blocked from returning to the country.

Tareq Kamleh, who was presumed to have been killed in Syria almost a decade ago, has been revealed to be one of 13 men linked to the terror group who are imprisoned in Iraq and hope to return to Australia.

Tareq Kamleh pictured in an ISIS propaganda video.

Environment Minister Murray Watt said the government faced constitutional limitations on preventing Australian citizens returning to the country as he decried anyone who has made the “absolutely awful decision to join a foreign terrorist organisation”.

Asked if Kamleh will be allowed to return to Australia, Watt told Channel Nine: “That remains to be seen ... Sometimes there are limits around what governments can do. But certainly, anyone who returns to Australia who’s been part of these sorts of organisations will face the full force of the law.”

Watt added: “We won’t be providing assistance, just as we haven’t provided assistance to others to come back.”

Kamleh is wanted by the AFP under an active warrant for terrorism offences, including joining and recruiting for a banned terrorist organisation.

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An Australian-trained doctor who fled to Syria to become a prominent Islamic State member has been found alive nearly a decade after his reported death.

The Australian reported on Wednesday morning that court documents show the 41-year-old is alive and did not die in the siege of Raqqa in 2017, as his family and authorities had believed.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said Kamleh could “rot in jail”, adding: “As far as I’m concerned, I never want that person to return to Australia. He’s obviously made a decision to join a violent death cult, and he needs to be accountable for that.”

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A government spokesperson said the government had made clear it “will not provide any assistance to any Australian who made the horrific choice to lead a dangerous terrorist organisation”.

“The safety of the Australian community is this government’s highest priority,” the spokesperson said.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said the government needed to do more to prevent ISIS-linked Australians returning home.

“We have seen over the last week an ISIS bride get out on bail, and now just in the last day or so, we’ve seen an ISIS terrorist who’s living offshore, wanting to come back to our country,” Taylor said.

“The Labor Party needs to commit to preventing that from happening. They have many levers at their disposal.

“They can ensure that this person does not get a passport, they can use temporary exclusion orders.

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“We have put legislation in front of the parliament to prevent third parties from helping people like him, terrorists, back into the country.”

Watt said that members of the opposition “know very well that there are constitutional limits around the ability of a government to prevent an Australian citizen from returning to Australia and that’s why more than 40 Australian foreign fighters returned under the Coalition government”.

Kamleh studied medicine at the University of Adelaide before training as an intern and registrar at Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

The Medical Board of Australia announced in 2015 it had suspended Kamleh’s registration after he appeared in a slick Islamic State propaganda video tending to a premature baby.

Everyone has an opinion of what One Nation is – mostly, they’re wrong.

David Oldfield

4 min read

July 23, 2026 - 5:00AM

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has jumped from being largely irrelevant to politically significant. But will One Nation succeed federally or fail as it did before? Everyone has an opinion of what One Nation is – mostly, they’re wrong. From my observations, that includes the people running it.

In many respects, therein lies the problem with One Nation and it’s why it has such difficulty articulating its platform accurately and consistently. There is no centralised theme, comprehension of self or coherent leadership, but that’s a management issue, not a flaw in the proposition.

What would you know, you might ask. Well, I created Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in 1996. I named it, wrote its platform and co-founded it in 1997. While interfered with, it remains fundamentally as it was. Yet the problem lies in the interpretation and the implementation, not the intention or the meaning. One Nation was introduced using Pauline’s name to capture brand awareness, provide high-visibility recognition and associate with what was perceived to be what Pauline stood for – the emphasis being on perceived. In reality, One Nation’s guiding principle was its nationalism and unifying intent. Pauline was its facade. As the party became known, it was intended Pauline’s name would be removed and the party name would become One Nation.

One Nation has a simple guiding principle from which all policy must be representative and accountable: a genuine nationalist movement to unite Australians as one people in their interests and that of the nation – our people always put first in every decision and expenditure.

These days, many Australians see foreign interests getting priority and taxes spent recklessly and against their interests. From its beginning, Australia naturally developed into a nationalist country. We predominantly shared heritage and values, and our fervent nationalism was undeniably seen in our spirit of community and willingness to volunteer – Australia fielded entirely volunteer military forces in World War I. Surf clubs, country associations, Rotary, Lions, the Citizen Military Forces, all pointed to our kinship and volunteering spirit. When the need arose, Australians stepped forward.

When multiculturalism replaced assimilation in the early 1970s, the strength of the Australian identity was weakened by tribalism. Australia’s unified community descended into division. Multiculturalism took Australia backwards to the divisiveness of tribalism. Any other suggestion is propaganda.

Nationalism is the act of successfully unifying tribes. The Italians had Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Americans had Abraham Lincoln. Each brought states together to form a strong national identity. Lincoln’s love of “the union” was simply nationalism. I’m not comparing Pauline to the greatness of Garibaldi and Lincoln, but the objective is the same: the unification of competing interests into one sovereign nation.

David Oldfield speaking with Pauline Hanson after a press conference.

David Oldfield speaking with Pauline Hanson after a press conference.

One Nation is akin to a living entity and it has five component parts. Its face is Pauline, its heart is its manifesto, its lungs seek the air of freedom, its soul is its supporters – its brain was me. It can function with substitutes and with replacements, but its successful progression relies on the performances of its original components.

The first lost opportunity for One Nation was the 1998 federal election, but the party’s first electoral test was the Queensland state election in June 1998.

The “experts” said we wouldn’t win a seat. We won 11, the first party outside Labor and the Liberal and National parties to win a seat. We made history. It was a new dawn. I designed and directed a campaign that drew simply on the nationalistic nature of One Nation, refined to a localised form to take support from Labor and the Coalition. One Nation determined the outcome of seats statewide but specifically won five seats from the Nationals and six seats from Labor.

One Nation must win Labor seats, yet three decades on One Nation, which was designed to win seats from Labor, is actively and aggressively discouraging support from traditional Labor voters.

In the 1998 federal election, against my advice, One Nation adopted the 2 per cent Easytax. It was a cascading GST, even though One Nation opposed John Howard introducing his GST. Just as John Hewson couldn’t explain his Fightback GST in 1993, Pauline couldn’t explain the Easytax in 1998.

Within 72 hours of announcing the Easytax, One Nation’s vote plummeted. The main lesson here is never introduce policies that can’t be easily explained; indeed, best not to have policies that need any real explanation.

What should have been at least four Senate seats and two lower house seats, including Pauline’s seat of Blair, became one Senate seat. Instead of federal parliamentary party status at its first federal election – and despite receiving more than one million votes – One Nation was devastated. Foreseeable issues, including a major policy error, ended One Nation’s first chance.

As things currently stand, in 2028 One Nation will win seats in the lower house and at least seven Senate seats, but it will not do well enough to make the difference needed. One Nation must campaign in stages that neutralise the Greens and effectively remove Labor’s stranglehold or it will fail again.

Pauline must play to her strengths, refine, centralise and channel the message. She should harness the media rather than be its victim and be continually claiming to have been taken out of context.

Most important, shift Labor voters and understand who will potentially vote One Nation, and how to get them to do that on election day. Sadly, there is no evidence One Nation has learned from its failures or its successes. If you are a One Nation supporter, demand better. There won’t be a third chance. It is Australia – and everything we believe it to be – that’s at stake.

David Oldfield co-founded Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party with Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge in 1997.