Thursday, 28 November 2024

Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:38): There are some very concerning reports today in the Age newspaper in another excellent article written by Nick McKenzie around the CFMEU and the enormous concerns about Victoria’s so-called Big Build projects with what has been reported around the corruption, intimidation, bullying and criminal behaviour that is going on on these taxpayer-funded projects that have cost Victorian taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in waste, mismanagement and overruns and poor project management and oversight. That has been under the purview of the then minister, now Premier, Jacinta Allan, who has done nothing about this – done absolutely nothing about it – for 10 long years.

We are in this position where we have got people that are named in this article who have got very unsavoury connections with various individuals, but what is concerning is this quote:

On paper, Leavitt was employed through union-backed labour hire firms, such as Top Up and OCC, and was ultimately paid by the Victorian taxpayer.

The Greens do not get away with this either. They are supported by the CFMEU. In fact Greens leader Adam Bandt defended his party’s embracing of the CFMEU, which was only in August this year. This is really concerning, that the Greens are being supported by the CFMEU. The political party of the Greens has that support, and I would think that is a huge concern to the people of Prahran.