Premier Jacinta Allan’s handling of the CFMEU scandal has emerged as a crucial case study in political accountability, less a question of technical legal breach and more a profound failure of the Westminster system that underpins governance in Victoria. As practitioners and voters assess the integrity of their government, a distinction must be drawn between technical compliance and constitutional responsibility. The recent episode involving the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) and the mounting pressure for Premier Allan to step aside highlight this chasm.
The IBAC Referral: A Shield, Not an Integrity Response
The first key flashpoint is Premier Allan’s 2026 public reliance on a referral she made to integrity bodies, including IBAC, in 2024. She presented this referral as proof that she had “done her part” in response to serious allegations of CFMEU-linked corruption.
IBAC, however, took the unusual step of publicly clarifying that it had not acted on the referral because it fell outside its core remit. For the commission to investigate, the allegations must involve a “public officer,” and in this case, they did not. The commission’s position is technically orthodox, as its jurisdiction is over corrupt conduct by public officers or authorities, not all instances of private-sector or union misconduct that may touch on public projects.
What is more troubling, however, is the revelation that IBAC had already informed the Premier back in 2024 that her referral was outside of their jurisdiction. Despite this prior knowledge, she continued to publicly promote the letter as an active integrity response. The issue, therefore, is not the legal accuracy of IBAC’s statement but the deliberate use of a procedurally futile action to create a misleading impression of decisiveness and action. The government’s actions and rhetoric are seen by many as an abrogation of the responsibility that rests with the Premier.
The Imperative of Political Accountability
The question of whether Premier Allan should resign is where legal and political concepts collide. It is helpful to disentangle three distinct ideas that are often blurred in public debate: legal conflicts, personal corruption, and political accountability. On current public material, there is no clear evidence of a classic legal conflict (such as a direct financial interest), nor has there been an integrity finding that she personally engaged in corrupt conduct.
However, the case for political accountability is significantly more compelling. Political accountability is a core Westminster convention that holds ministers responsible for systemic failures within their portfolio, even if they did not personally engage in corrupt activities.
The Premier was the minister most responsible for the state’s “Big Build” during the period when construction sites, funded by billions in public money, were allegedly infiltrated by CFMEU figures, bikies, and gangland identities. Her party has also accepted donations from entities now under police investigation for suspected corrupt payments or links to those same networks.
In this context, her subsequent actions are seen as a serious failure of candour and independence. She has:
- Dismissed a $15 billion estimate of the cost of union-related corruption as “discredited,” despite the figure being supported by both independent integrity professionals like Geoffrey Watson, SC, and the Fair Work Commission’s general manager, Murray Furlong.
- Resisted calls for a broad-based inquiry or royal commission into CFMEU and construction-sector corruption.
- Publicly relied on the referral to IBAC that she already knew, for jurisdictional reasons, was incapable of producing action.
A reasonable observer could conclude that the Premier is no longer able to approach the CFMEU issue with the necessary independence because her political incentives and prior decisions are too deeply enmeshed in the problem she is now asked to fix. As investigative reporter Nick McKenzie has queried, “where’s the accountability in a Westminster system? If a minister presides over a series of corrupt projects, responsibility should flow to that minister. Well, who was the minister most responsible for the Big Build? It’s the premier”.
From a constitutional-norm perspective, the argument is strong: her position is compromised, having presided over the tainted projects, knowing the futility of the IBAC referral, and continuing to resist the level of independent scrutiny the scale of the allegations demands.
The ultimate question is not about proving a charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but about whether Victorians can have confidence that their Premier is prepared to place the public interest ahead of party donations, industrial alliances, and reputational damage. On the facts presently in the public domain, the honourable course for many would be to step aside so that a truly independent process can proceed, unconstrained by the baggage of past decisions.