The grift, thuggery, misogyny and violence aren’t four separate problems needing four separate fixes. Each thrived on construction sites where people couldn’t safely raise a concern. Victoria already has a policy intended to change that. The Royal Commission is the moment to make sure it works.
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“It is clear … that there was grift, there was thuggery, there was misogyny, and there was violence on taxpayer-funded construction sites. I have zero tolerance for that,” Premier Ben Carroll told reporters, crediting investigative journalism and whistleblowers for bringing it to light.
Victoria’s Royal Commission into the integrity of major public and civil infrastructure construction projects was set up to follow the money. But it should also follow what left people unheard when they raised concerns, and why it took outsiders, not the system itself, to surface what was happening on site.
The Commission’s task is integrity, the conduct, the systems and commercial arrangements that may have enabled it, and whether government and industry oversight was adequate; this covers everything the Premier named.
That matters not only for women in construction, but it affects everyone on site.
Misogyny, harassment and discrimination aren’t “culture issues” to be managed with a staff survey or a stand-alone diversity policy. They are indicators of whether a workplace is actually safe – whether people can raise concerns without fear, and whether leaders act when they do. A workplace where people can’t speak up has an accountability problem. While that doesn’t mean every integrity failure has the same cause, it does mean culture, integrity and risk management can’t be treated as separate problems with separate fixes.
For too long, the sector’s answer to women’s participation has been a pipeline answer: attract more women, fund more apprenticeships, set participation targets. Necessary, but not sufficient on their own. The harder question is whether construction can build a workplace women actually stay in.
The numbers say it can’t yet. Women make up just 13 per cent of the construction workforce, down from 17 per cent two decades ago. The typical construction employer pays men 23.8 per cent more than women across total remuneration. That decline is happening as the industry faces a shortfall of up to 300,000 workers by 2027. It’s a workforce that cannot afford to keep losing. Recruiting more women into an industry that doesn’t retain, develop or promote them isn’t a fix; it’s a leak. And the sector keeps trying to refill from the top.
Victoria already has a foundation to build on. The Building Equality Policy uses public procurement to set women’s participation targets, fund training and employment pathways, require Gender Equality Action Plans, and embed contractual obligations on major publicly funded projects – including sexual harassment reporting and a staged response to non-compliance. It sits within a broader Social Procurement Framework that already treats government purchasing as a lever for social value.
The policy exists. The next step is making sure it delivers outcomes on site, not just compliance on paper.
Our message to the Royal Commission is simple. When the government funds a project, it should ensure that policy architecture produces safe, respectful, accountable workplaces in practice. That means four things: reporting pathways that the entire supply chain can demonstrably trust, protection from retaliation that’s explicit and enforceable, not implied, measuring whether women are retained and promoted rather than a participation target on paper; and transparent, proportionate consequences when commitments aren’t met.
This isn’t a competing agenda to the Commission’s integrity work. It’s the same work. Clear obligations, credible reporting and independent assurance are what catch risk early, whether it’s money, thuggery or harassment.
The Commission is due to report to the Victorian Government by 20 August 2027. Its legacy shouldn’t just be an account of what went wrong. It should be a new baseline for every organisation building Victoria’s infrastructure. Finishing on time and on budget would not be successful if the people building it weren’t safe, respected, and able to raise concerns without risking their careers.
That’s the difference between a report that gets read once and a policy that changes what happens on site.
