28/07/2026
Victoria’s Big Build: Built Big. Governed Small.
The infrastructure was necessary. The blank cheque was not.
28 July 2026
Victoria’s Big Build may ultimately be remembered as one of the most consequential infrastructure programs in Australian history.
It may also become a case study in what happens when genuine public need, political ambition, inadequate scrutiny and alleged criminal influence are allowed to operate inside the same enormous spending program.
Today, the political fallout reached the top.
Jacinta Allan stepped down as premier, Ben Carroll was sworn in as Victoria’s 50th premier, and one of his first announcements was a royal commission into the construction sector. The detailed terms of reference are still to come, but Carroll has promised they will be exhaustive.
That is not routine political housekeeping.
It is an acknowledgement that the Big Build has moved beyond arguments about budgets and completion dates. It has become a crisis of public trust.
Separate the noise from the signal
There are two lazy positions in this debate.
The first is that the entire Big Build was corrupt, wasteful and unnecessary.
The second is that because useful roads, tunnels and railway stations have been completed, criticism of the program is simply political opportunism.
Neither position stands up.
The assets are real. The benefits are real. The governance failures are also real.
Victoria needed major transport investment. Melbourne’s population had outgrown much of its road and rail network. Level crossings were dangerous and inefficient. The City Loop was reaching capacity. The West Gate Bridge had become a critical single point of failure.
The mistake was not building infrastructure.
The mistake was believing that the urgency to build somehow reduced the need for proper business cases, disciplined procurement, market competition, public transparency and integrity controls.
It should have increased them.
What exactly is the Big Build?
The Big Build is not one project or one contract.
It is an umbrella program covering more than 180 major road and rail projects, officially valued at around $100 billion, and directly employing more than 20,000 people. It includes the Metro Tunnel, level-crossing removals, West Gate Tunnel, North East Link, regional rail upgrades and the Suburban Rail Loop.
That scale matters.
When government spends $100 billion, it does more than buy concrete and steel. It changes the construction market. It influences wages, contractor behaviour, subcontracting arrangements, land values and the negotiating power of unions and major builders.
A program that large requires governance on the same scale.
Victoria never convincingly demonstrated that it had it.
First, give credit where it is due
The Metro Tunnel opened on 30 November 2025, delivering nine kilometres of twin tunnels and five new underground stations. It is a substantial addition to Melbourne’s rail network, not a vanity project with no practical purpose.
The level-crossing program is eliminating 110 crossings by 2032. Whatever people think of the cost or political targeting of individual sites, removing busy road-and-rail intersections improves safety, traffic flow and train reliability.
The West Gate Tunnel opened on 14 December 2025, providing another river crossing, an alternative to the West Gate Bridge and a new route for freight traffic.
These are not drawings on a whiteboard. They are functioning assets that Victorians will use for decades.
The sensible centre should reject the argument that government borrowing for long-life infrastructure is automatically irresponsible. Future generations will use these assets, so there is nothing inherently wrong with future generations contributing to their cost.
But a useful asset does not prove it was properly selected, competitively procured or reasonably priced.
A tunnel can be both valuable and badly managed.
The West Gate Tunnel tells the story
The West Gate Tunnel was originally costed at approximately $5.5 billion, with around $400 million expected from taxpayers.
By the time it opened, the reported cost had reached $10.2 billion, with the state contribution rising to around $4.2 billion.
Some of that increase had legitimate explanations.
Contaminated soil, difficult ground conditions, COVID disruptions, changes in scope, inflation and industrial disputes all played a part.
But that is not the full defence the government thinks it is.
Good project management is not the absence of unexpected problems. It is the ability to identify risk, allocate it properly, price it realistically and respond without handing taxpayers an open-ended bill.
The West Gate Tunnel was useful infrastructure delivered through a deeply troubled commercial process.
The fact that it eventually opened does not erase what happened along the way.
Victoria tried to build everything at once
This may be the most important failure because it sits underneath many of the others.
Victoria launched multiple megaprojects into a construction market with a limited number of major contractors, tunnelling specialists, engineers, project managers and skilled workers.
The state was effectively bidding against itself.
The Victorian Auditor-General warned that the national infrastructure boom had produced labour and material shortages. Between 2019–20 and 2021–22, the estimated cost of 117 Victorian projects increased by a net $3.8 billion, while 30 projects were delayed.
This was not entirely unforeseeable.
When every government wants the same builders, engineers and machinery at the same time, prices rise and competitive tension falls.
That creates a dangerous environment:
* contractors become difficult to replace;
* industrial disruption becomes more expensive;
* subcontractors gain leverage;
* governments become reluctant to terminate failing arrangements; and
* finishing the project becomes more important than preserving value for money.
Once a tunnel is half-dug, the taxpayer is no longer negotiating from a position of strength.
The numbers are difficult to follow — and that is part of the problem
The Auditor-General’s 2026 review examined 110 Victorian major projects with a combined estimated value of $149.33 billion.
Across 89 projects with comparable information, total estimated investment had increased by $11.31 billion over the life of those projects. Transport accounted for about $8.02 billion of that increase. These figures cover major Victorian projects more broadly, not just the Big Build, and some increases reflect legitimate scope changes rather than simple overruns.
The greater concern is transparency.
The Auditor-General found that public reporting still does not consistently show the original budget, current budget, original completion date, current completion date and underlying reasons for changes.
Internal government reporting is considerably more detailed than what the public receives.
That matters.
The government knows more about these projects than taxpayers do.
Commercial confidentiality is sometimes necessary during procurement. It should not become a permanent excuse for hiding project performance after contracts have been signed.
The public should not need a forensic accountant, several freedom-of-information requests and a parliamentary inquiry to work out whether a project is on budget.
The Suburban Rail Loop is the ultimate test
The Suburban Rail Loop may be strategically visionary.
It may also be the project most likely to overwhelm Victoria’s finances if the assumptions behind it prove wrong.
SRL East is expected to cost between $30 billion and $34.5 billion, with services proposed to begin in 2035. The government argues it will create orbital rail connections, enable tens of thousands of homes and reduce Melbourne’s dependence on travelling through the CBD.
Those are serious potential benefits.
But the planning history is troubling.
The Auditor-General found that the early development process was highly unusual for a project of this scale. Transport agencies were not involved in the initial planning, Treasury was not involved in the early business case, and significant funding commitments were made before a full business case had been completed. A full business case for the entire SRL program has still not been produced.
Infrastructure Australia’s 2025 assessment recognised the project’s potential to improve housing, employment access and cross-suburban transport.
But it also reported low confidence in the cost estimate, said the economic benefits appeared overstated and concluded that using a contemporary cost estimate could raise doubts about whether SRL East’s benefits exceeded its costs.
Yet Infrastructure Australia’s 2026 priority list now identifies SRL East as an immediate priority for delivery investment because of its housing and connectivity potential.
That apparent contradiction actually tells us something important:
A project can address a genuine strategic need while still having an inadequately proven financial case.
The choice is not simply “build it” or “cancel it”.
The responsible position is to reprice it, update the patronage and housing assumptions, independently test the value-capture model and refuse to approve later stages until the numbers are credible.
Victoria is not bankrupt — but its room to manoeuvre is shrinking
The theatrical claim that Victoria is about to go broke is not supported by the budget numbers.
Net debt is forecast to rise from $165.3 billion in 2025–26 to $199.3 billion by 2029–30. However, net debt as a proportion of the state economy is forecast to peak at around 24.9 per cent and then edge down to 24.4 per cent.
That is not an immediate insolvency crisis.
But it is a serious reduction in future flexibility.
Not all Victorian debt was caused by the Big Build. COVID support, operating deficits, hospitals, schools and other expenditure also contributed.
The more honest criticism is this:
Every billion dollars lost through poor procurement, weak oversight or inflated project costs is a billion dollars that cannot readily be used for hospitals, teachers, housing, road maintenance, policing or tax relief.
The danger is not that Victoria suddenly runs out of money.
The danger is that future governments inherit a state where more revenue is already committed and fewer choices remain.
The $15 billion corruption claim needs to be treated carefully
A widely reported claim suggests CFMEU-linked corruption may have cost Victorian taxpayers as much as $15 billion.
That figure is politically explosive.
It is also not an audited finding that $15 billion was stolen.
Geoffrey Watson SC arrived at the estimate by applying an assumed 15 per cent impact to the approximately $100 billion Big Build program. The estimate was described as rough, and sections relating to it were removed from an earlier version of the report because the CFMEU administrator considered them insufficiently tested.
Repeating $15 billion as settled fact weakens the legitimate case for an inquiry.
It gives defenders of the system an easy way to attack one disputed number rather than answer the broader evidence.
But caution over the number cannot become an excuse to ignore the underlying allegations.
There are serious claims involving organised-crime connections, intimidation, manipulation of labour-hire arrangements, unnecessary workers and contractors allegedly being pressured into using favoured providers.
Jacinta Allan publicly acknowledged that criminals had operated on some Victorian construction sites. The new premier has now committed to a royal commission.
That distinction matters.
High wages are not corruption.
Strong unions are not corruption.
Safe working conditions are not corruption.
But ghost workers, false invoicing, coercion, extortion, corrupt contracting and organised-crime influence are criminal matters if proven.
Supporting workers does not require protecting people who exploit workers, taxpayers or the union movement itself.
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The royal commission cannot be designed to protect the political system
A royal commission focused only on union officials and low-level subcontractors would be inadequate.
It must be able to examine:
1. Union conduct, including intimidation, site control and relationships with labour-hire businesses.
2. Head contractors and subcontractors, including whether companies paid inflated costs to avoid disruption.
3. Government departments and delivery authorities, including what warnings they received and how they responded.
4. Ministerial offices, including whether political considerations influenced procurement, industrial relations or the treatment of complaints.
5. Labour-hire and traffic-management companies, including beneficial ownership and links between supposedly independent businesses.
6. The flow of public money, from the original contract through every subcontracting layer.
The central question is not merely, “Were criminals present?”
It is:
How did they gain access to public money, who knew, who benefited, and why did the safeguards fail?
Anything narrower will look like an attempt to sacrifice a few obvious villains while protecting the machinery that allowed the problem to develop.
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What Victoria should do now
Cancelling every unfinished project would be reckless. Governments can destroy billions of dollars by abandoning half-built infrastructure.
A credible reset would take a more disciplined approach.
1. Finish near-complete, high-value projects
Do not turn expensive assets into stranded construction sites merely to make a political point.
2. Reassess every major uncontracted stage
Later stages of the Suburban Rail Loop and other future commitments should face updated costs, patronage assumptions and independent benefit analysis before more money is committed.
3. Publish a single quarterly project ledger
For every project over $100 million, show:
* the original budget and date;
* the current budget and date;
* expenditure to date;
* major scope changes;
* the reasons for every variation; and
* whether the promised benefits are actually being achieved.
4. Follow the money through the entire contracting chain
Every major contractor, subcontractor and labour-hire business receiving public money should disclose beneficial ownership, related-party transactions and political or union affiliations.
5. Put market capacity ahead of political announcements
Victoria must stop launching more projects than the construction sector can competitively deliver.
6. No major announcement before the business case
The business case must guide the political decision — not be written afterwards to justify it.
The Watt View
The Big Build was not fundamentally the wrong policy.
Victoria needed to build.
The failure was allowing the infrastructure program to become a permanent political campaign where visible construction was treated as proof of competent government.
It is not.
A crane proves that money is being spent.
A tunnel proves that something was eventually completed.
Neither proves that taxpayers received value, that contracts were genuinely competitive or that public money was protected from coercion and corruption.
Victoria will benefit from parts of the Big Build for the next century.
It may also spend decades paying for the failures that occurred behind the hoardings.
The final verdict
The Victorian Big Build produced necessary infrastructure but was delivered with governance, transparency and integrity systems that were too weak for the scale of the undertaking.
The answer is not to stop building.
The answer is to stop pretending that building something — at any cost, through any process and with inadequate scrutiny — is automatically an achievement.
A ribbon-cutting proves a project was finished. It does not prove it was honestly selected, fairly procured or reasonably priced.
— Peter Watt
