A Queensland inquiry is demanding the records of confidential and politically sensitive conversations involving Australia’s highest-ranking infrastructure officials, including the public servant overseeing the scandal-plagued Victorian Big Build.
The Queensland Commission of Inquiry is using its royal commission powers to compel infrastructure industry peak body Transport Australia to produce documents capturing the discussions of its board, which comprises some of the nation’s most powerful state and federal public servants.
Directors include Victorian Big Build chief public servant Kevin Devlin and his NSW and Commonwealth counterparts, as well as senior executives from major government contractors.
The records being sought, according to three industry sources with knowledge of the commission’s still-confidential request, will also capture boardroom disclosures from senior executives at major contractors who sat on the board alongside federal Infrastructure Department secretary Jim Betts, Transport for NSW secretary Josh Murray and Queensland Transport Department director-general Sally Stannard.
The Queensland inquiry’s move looms as a fresh headache for the Allan government, and potentially other states. It comes after this masthead reported that the Transport Australia board had, in early 2025, held sensitive closed-door discussions about the extent of corruption and cost blowouts on Victoria’s signature $100 billion infrastructure scheme, as well as other taxpayer-funded projects across the nation.
The board agreed at the meeting last March on an estimate that industrial lawlessness, criminality and other wrongdoing were adding a 30 per cent premium onto some major public projects.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has previously dismissed estimates of major blowouts on Big Build sites as baseless.
On Tuesday, this masthead revealed Devlin had separately confidentially discussed his concerns about serious union wrongdoing on Victorian rail and road projects with Allan while she was transport infrastructure minister.
Allan on Tuesday again batted away suggestions she was aware of widespread CFMEU problems before this masthead’s Building Bad investigation published in mid-2024 as the opposition released documents showing contractors on the $26 billion North East Link complained about CFMEU-caused delays on the toll road in March 2023. The project is jointly funded by the Victorian and federal governments.
The Queensland Commission of Inquiry’s decision to force Transport Australia, which was formerly known as Roads Australia, to hand over its records will place further scrutiny on Devlin’s concerns but also disclosures from public servants overseeing major projects in Queensland and NSW along with federal government sites.
It may also lead to subpoenas to Devlin or other officials or executives from major contractors to testify about their knowledge of wrongdoing and corruption on government projects and the extent to which they passed these concerns on to politicians and ministers.
Allan has steadfastly refused to call a major inquiry to examine the corruption on government sites, while the NSW and federal governments have also resisted following Queensland’s lead and back a probe into systemic wrongdoing in the building sector.
While Victorian major infrastructure sites hosted the worst examples of crime and corruption, projects in Queensland and NSW have also been afflicted. The Queensland inquiry heard on Tuesday that the CFMEU had tried to influence the selection of contractors on the $19 billion Cross River Rail project in Brisbane, as well as pushing the delivery authority to enter an unlawful industrial deal.
Transport Australia is Australia’s peak infrastructure and transport body. It is directed by senior public servants and executives of large road and rail project contractors. It declined to comment on Tuesday.
The organisation’s board recently changed, with Devlin replaced by Victorian Transport Department secretary Jeroen Weimar.
Other board members include North East Link State Tolling Corporation deputy chair Aneetha de Silva. The business representatives include the chief executive of Big Build contractor Acciona, Bede Noonan; Arup executive Kate West; Cimic chief executive Pedro Vicente; and BMD chief executive Scott Power.
Devlin’s counterparts from other states also raised concerns at a 2025 board meeting, according to sources not permitted to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.
Union trouble takes toll
A document obtained under freedom of information laws and released by the Victorian opposition on Tuesday showed that the consortium building the North East Link complained to the government in 2023 that the CFMEU was delaying construction by blocking surveyors from carrying out their work on the overbudget 10-kilometre toll road.
Spark, the consortium building the project, briefed transport officials on the “negative impact” the construction union was having in a monthly report tracking progress in March 2023. The federal government has contributed $5 billion towards the project.
“During this month the CFMEU prevented the surveyors from carrying out their duties effectively,” the March 2023 progress report said. “This has had a negative impact on progress re setting out etc. But workarounds have been developed by the site team.”
It revealed that tunnelling on the North East Link was unable to begin for up to two months because of “later delivery and longer CFMEU driven assembly”.
The first tunnel boring machine was expected to start excavations 65 days later than planned, pushing its start time out from March to May 2024, while the second was delayed 44 days from May to July 2024.
Later that year, the government revealed the North East Link had blown out by another $10 billion. It was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion, before reaching $26 billion in December 2023.
Those cost escalations were blamed on expanded scope and environmental regulation compliance not calculated in the business case, as well as global disruptions including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war.
On Tuesday, a Victorian government spokesperson repeated those justifications but did not comment on the complaints about the claimed CFMEU problems.
Opposition transport infrastructure spokesman Evan Mulholland said Allan “as minister responsible, and premier, was repeatedly warned about CFMEU behaviour adding costs to taxpayers and causing disruption on construction sites”.
Mulholland made the freedom of information request in October 2023 but was denied access, before appealing to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner and then the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
On Tuesday, Allan conceded that Devlin, the head of the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority, had privately warned her about serious wrongdoing on Labor’s $100 billion Big Build, but said it was not found to be “systemic” and refused to say how many times she was notified about misconduct, insisting she had always responded appropriately.
“When Kevin Devlin raised with me in a meeting in June 2023 that he was aware the authority at the time was aware of anecdotal claims of alleged criminal behaviour, I ordered for those claims to be investigated by the agency with the Department of Transport at the time,” the premier said on Tuesday.
“They came back and provided advice that there was no evidence that there was systematic behaviour, but I was still concerned enough. I was concerned that this needed to be investigated further, which is why, in addition to the authority referring this matter to Victoria Police, I also, too, in June of 2023 wrote to the chief commissioner of Victoria Police.”
Deputy Victorian Nationals leader Emma Kealy said it was “utter bullshit” that the premier did not know about widespread wrongdoing on government building sites, and that she should “step up or step away from the job”.
Four sources, this masthead reported on Tuesday, said Devlin felt his concerns had not been heeded.
As one of a small number of senior public servants serving as a director of peak body Roads Australia, Devlin separately contributed to its board’s collective estimate – detailed in a confidential briefing note obtained by this masthead – last year that entrenched industrial lawlessness and criminality was fuelling 30 per cent blowouts on government infrastructure projects.
Allan, who has refused calls for a royal commission, said she was “of course” concerned by that figure.
“As evidenced by the actions that we have taken,” she said.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
Rachel Eddie is a Victorian state political reporter for The Age. Contact her at rachel.eddie@theage.com.au, rachel.eddie@protonmail.com, or via Signal at @RachelEddie.99Connect via X or email.