Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (16:31): I rise today to grieve for the state of integrity in Victoria, and for those on the other side who do not know how it is spelled: I-N-T-E-G-R-I-T-Y. Integrity: it seems that some have lost the ability to understand the spelling and/or the meaning of the word. Labor wants Victorians to believe that changing the name on the Premier’s door changes the character of the government, and it does not. Different leader, same culture and the same consequences for Victorians. Operation Richmond, as the member for Berwick spoke about earlier, exposes a little bit of the culture that I am talking about. The Big Build is an example of how much that culture has cost, and regional roads are just one of the examples of who pays the price, and that is: Victorians pay the price for the lack of integrity in this Labor government every single day. Integrity is not a slogan that is unveiled at the new Premier’s first press conference. It is not a reshuffled cabinet or a new photo on the government website. Integrity is about honesty and transparency, even when telling the truth might be politically inconvenient, when your political allies are implicated and when that accountability and integrity might cost you something. Labor has changed its leader and declared itself renewed. But Victorians did not elect a new Premier or a new government. They got a new salesman for the same damaged product – different Premier, same Labor government. Or, as the Leader of the Nationals has quoted several times: different jockey, same buggered horse. That is true.

I want to examine those three exhibits in the case against this government’s integrity. Operation Richmond – we have waited a long, long time for this – corruption and intimidation surrounding the Big Build and the disgraceful condition of Victoria’s roads. That is, like I said, just one of the many examples of who pays the price. They might all look like they are separate failures, but they all begin with the same political instinct, and that is to protect Labor first and deal with the public later. Labor have not cleaned their house; they have just changed the name on the letterbox.

Operation Richmond investigated the allegations concerning negotiations between the government and the United Firefighters Union. And yes, okay, IBAC did not ultimately find criminal corruption – I tell you what, it is the definition of ‘corruption’ according to this government that is the problem – but it did report serious integrity failures that led to recommendations for stronger ministerial standards. Obviously, if the government has not received the certificate saying that it is not corruption and it is not criminal corruption, then surely the bar for good governance is extraordinarily low. It is mind-boggling.

The government does not receive a good character reference simply because the conduct falls just short of a criminal threshold. What IBAC exposed was a system where access mattered, relationships mattered and transparency in government did not matter; it came second. It was all about relationships ‍– to make sure that Peter Marshall got exactly what he wanted. Now the Premier describes that conduct all of a sudden, after all of this time, as ‘intolerable’. But where was that intolerance when it required a bit of courage, rather than standing by nodding heads at a press conference? Where was the outrage when speaking up might have damaged his prospects inside the Labor Party? Where was the demand for reform before the report became politically impossible to ignore? I am not saying that the Premier conceived every grubby arrangement exposed by Operation Richmond, but I am saying that he chose to remain a loyal and increasingly senior custodian of the government responsible for them. He took the promotions, he defended the record, he sat around the cabinet table and now he is asking Victorians to believe that he has arrived from somewhere else to clean it up – please. The Premier’s road to Damascus appears to have run straight through a leadership ballot. He has discovered zero tolerance, all of a sudden, for Labor misconduct at precisely the moment tolerance became politically inconvenient. The new Premier says the old conduct was intolerable, but apparently it was tolerable enough to build a ministerial career beneath it.

Operation Richmond may not have found criminal corruption, and I will state that. But ‘not criminal’ is an extraordinarily low ethical ambition for a government, I am sure everyone here can agree. Operation Richmond has not been an isolated lapse; extraordinary lengths were sought to cover it up. It revealed an operating system, and the Big Build has been running on this operating system in exactly the same way. The independent evidence from Geoffrey Watson identified fraud, bribery, collusion and undue influence as risks throughout major project procurement and construction. And where is the $15 billion? That is what Victorians are asking every single day: where is the $15 billion? Imagine what we could have done with that $15 billion. Imagine the police, the teachers and the hospitals that have gone without, the critically underfunded hospitals and the patients waiting for health care and the roads that have been – we used to say ‘Jacintegrating before our eyes’, member for Morwell – falling apart. Imagine: we could have roads like runways with that $15 billion.

The connection here with the new Premier on Big Build sites is that his responsibility was for WorkSafe and the TAC from December 2024, combined with his longstanding cabinet position. He was not a visitor passing through Spring Street; he was the Deputy Premier, he was responsible for WorkSafe and he was part of a government overseeing one of the largest infrastructure programs and the largest corruption scandal this state has ever seen. If safety processes were being weaponised on taxpayer-funded sites, that was not someone else’s portfolio problem. If intimidation was infecting public projects, that was not an issue for a future royal commission, which at the time Labor were not going to call; it demanded action from the responsible government at the time and the responsible minister, and as the WorkSafe minister the now Premier was that responsible minister. On the very first day of course the Premier announced a royal commission at a press conference but has yet to do much about it. That does not absolve the government; it has indicted it, if anything. If a royal commission is necessary today, why was it not a determined action yesterday, three weeks ago or four weeks ago? Why all of a sudden now? You know why: because of the polls. We know that. The Premier has said that. It is only necessary now because the corruption scandal in this state has become politically damaging.

The now Premier understands that the only way to fix the polls and to potentially save – I think it is beyond repair – his position is to call a royal commission. It obviously had not started when Ben Carroll became Premier; it is only his own political need to be seen to be responding to it. Ministers cannot claim collective credit for every ribbon cut on the Big Build and then demand individual immunity when questions are asked about what happened behind the scenes. You cannot own every opening ceremony when you put on a hard hat and a high-vis and disown every single warning sign. There were warning signs and red flags everywhere. Labor treated every Big Build ribbon as a collective achievement and every Big Build scandal as somebody else’s responsibility. The Premier is not an outsider cleaning up Labor’s mess; he is a senior member of a government that helped create it. And a royal commission announced after the political damage is done is not leadership; it is an invoice for years of inaction.

Let me get to roads in the last 5 minutes or so I have got left. People in Mildura may never enter a Big Build site, thankfully, or negotiate with a union boss, but they experience this government’s priorities every time their tyres hit a crumbling regional road or pothole, crumbling shoulder or gashes right up the middle of the road. The now Premier was Minister for Roads and Road Safety in what years?

Danny O’Brien: 2020 to 2023.

Jade BENHAM: There you go, for three years. So the Premier cannot pretend the condition of our roads is something that was delivered to him in a sealed envelope on his first morning as Premier. He was the roads minister. They are not potholes that he has inherited; they are part of the record that, again, he has helped create.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Jade BENHAM: I am getting to that. I have got figures in front of me. The Auditor-General recorded an accumulated impairment of $1.24 billion for roads and bridges on 30 June 2024. The Auditor-General also said an earlier audit identified an increasing maintenance backlog and declining service levels. And at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee the government confirmed only 31 per cent of its claimed $1.04 billion of roads allocation was for planned pavement treatment. Its own regional patching measure was questioned after falling from over half a million square metres to 95,000. You can do the math on that.

Danny O’Brien: I have done it.

Jade BENHAM: Okay, good. Another lower target was also discussed. I did ask the department secretary at the time about the claims for pothole compensation. At the time there were around 200 ‍claims, I think, and the total then of claims that were successful was 13. That was in November last year at budget updates, and today we have got 15, so another two have been approved. That is the cost that regional Victorians in particular and Victorians everywhere pay for the lack of integrity in this government.

I will keep going on roads. I have got an audience, so why not? I have repeatedly reported the Cocamba road. Let us talk about the Robinvale-Sea Lake Road at Cocamba.

A member: I was hoping you’d bring this up.

Jade BENHAM: I thought you might, because everyone knows where Cocamba is. It is between Sea Lake and Robinvale.

Danny O’Brien: I have been there with you.

Jade BENHAM: Yes, you have. This road opened up. It is a main thoroughfare, obviously, from Robinvale, which is one of the hubs of irrigated horticulture in our region, and it leads to the Calder Highway. It opened up, and I was told it was because of floods. It is a long way from the river; there is no flooding. I tell you what, if we are going to continue to blame water on roads for the potholes and the gashes, you know what you need to do: actually allow the water to drain off the roads, maintain the vegetation on the side of the roads and create the ability for that water to run off so it does not sit in those potholes. And once they are fixed, two days later they open up again, because this is what we are dealing with every single day. It is infuriating. I will ask the member for Berwick, who has driven an EV. They do not carry spare tyres, do they?

Brad Battin: No.

Jade BENHAM: I laugh when I see these people lined up on the side of the road not knowing how to change a tyre, but apparently electric vehicles do not carry tyres. It is a class I am willing to teach at Parliament here. If anyone needs to know how to change a tyre, I am happy to teach that class.

Just to wrap up in the last less than a minute that I have, again, Operation Richmond has told us how this government behaves when powerful political relationships are involved, the Big Build tells us what happens when oversight and accountability are treated as obstacles and our roads tell us who pays when money, attention and basic competence are swallowed by that culture. If the Premier wants to start his premiership without accepting responsibility for the past – integrity does not work that way. So if it matters, start accepting responsibility, start accepting accountability and be transparent with Victorians, because Victorians are sick of paying the price.