The CFMEU wanted a builder off a $320 million hospital job. A whistleblower says Labor obliged

Retired public servant Stephen King says the Victorian government pressured him to throw a plastering company off the $320 million upgrade of Melbourne's Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital because the company was in a dispute with the CFMEU. He told his story to The Age, two other officials have backed it, and today, Jacinta Allan stood in front of the cameras and called it all wrong.

The Premier's denial came under intense questioning, and it only stretched so far: pressed on why a very senior former official, corroborated by two colleagues, would invent such a story, she repeated the denial and stopped short of saying King lied.

Her answer for anyone with concerns was to send them to Victoria Police and the Fair Work Commission. Neither fits. A dispute between a builder and a subcontractor is a matter for lawyers and mediators, and a claim that the government did the CFMEU's bidding is a matter for an inquiry into the government itself. The one inquiry that could do that, a Royal Commission into the Big Build, Allan refused again today.

Stephen King ran the state's riskiest health projects. He says the order came from the government

King wasn't a bystander. He was the Victorian Health Building Authority's executive director of high value, high risk projects, the official responsible for exactly the kind of build the Eye and Ear upgrade was, when he says the government leaned on him to remove the subcontractor the union was fighting with.

"The pressure came down to me from the government, and I was told it wanted the subcontractor gone," King told The Age. "When I asked about it, I was told the CFMEU was putting pressure on the government and the CFMEU was meeting the government regularly. It was absolutely inappropriate."

King said years on major government projects taught him the CFMEU's Victorian branch held significant influence over which contractors won work on state sites. That's the same branch that was forced into administration in 2024 after reporting revealed organised crime figures had infiltrated it, and the same union whose grip on the Big Build is at the centre of what corruption experts have called the state's biggest ever scandal.

"The unions would tell you who's going on the project. They say these [firms] are kosher, these aren't. So don't even bother with these ones," King said.

King also says the office that pressured him wasn't Allan's. It was another minister's. That detail matters because of what The Age reported earlier this month: in 2022, when Allan was transport minister, her own office intervened in the Gap Road level crossing removal at Sunbury on the CFMEU's behalf, a claim Allan dismissed despite project insiders confirming the account to the paper. If both accounts are right, that's two projects, two ministerial offices, and one union getting its way.

His account doesn't stand alone. Two other officials, who asked not to be named, have backed his claim.

"Those reports are wrong": Allan's own version still ends with the company gone

Allan's response on Tuesday was flat denial, repeated as often as the question came.

"Those media reports are not correct. Those reports are wrong, and there is no evidence or basis for that claim," she said.

Pressed for detail, the Premier offered her own account: this was "an historic matter" going back a number of years, a dispute between the head contractor and the subcontractor that "did not involve the government", and it went through a lengthy mediation the state wasn't party to.

"That mediation process was resolved in a way that the parties ended up parting ways, which is a demonstration that those processes that are in place to investigate and examine these matters, independent of government, are working," she said.

Notice what that version concedes: the plastering company still ended up off the job. The only dispute is over how. King says the government wanted the company gone because the CFMEU did. Allan says it was a private mediation working exactly as designed. And asked what the head contractor and subcontractor were actually fighting about, the Premier couldn't say, telling reporters "we would have to come back" with that detail.

The press conference got testier from there. Allan accused one reporter of "putting words into my mouth", and queried how King's role had been described: "I don't believe that was his position at the time. He was an executive director." When another reporter put it to her that a very senior former official, backed by two others, was more likely right than wrong, she returned to the script: "the advice I have is that claim is wrong."

That advice has a short paper trail. "Following information being provided to the government yesterday, information was sought from the agency, which is on the basis of which my advice is that that claim is incorrect," she said. The agency at the centre of the allegation was asked about the allegation, and the government is relaying its answer.

Allan says go to the police. The police taskforce says it can't touch most of it

Allan then reached for the line she uses every time the CFMEU comes up: take it to the authorities.

"I've said this on previous occasions, and I'll repeat it again. If there are people who hold information or evidence that raises particular concerns about behaviour, that should be referred ... to Victoria Police or other independent agencies," she said.

Look at that list against what's actually alleged. A dispute between a head contractor and a subcontractor is a commercial matter: the parties engage lawyers, they mediate, they litigate, and on Allan's own version of events that's exactly what happened here. Police investigate crimes, and the Fair Work Commission, by the Premier's own description, checks that enterprise agreements are properly made. None of them exists to referee a contract fallout between two companies. And King's allegation was never a contract fallout. It's that the government leaned on its own agency to do the CFMEU's bidding, and not one body on Allan's list is set up to investigate the government.

Even where police are the right door, they say it's locked. Senior officers on the Victoria Police taskforce set up to tackle construction industry corruption said just last month that they need new laws before they can pursue much of the conduct that's been reported. The Premier keeps pointing whistleblowers to agencies that either can't act or were never built for the job.

The alternative, a Royal Commission into corruption on the Big Build, is the inquiry multiple corruption experts insist is the only way to get to the bottom of the scandal. Allan rejected it again on Tuesday, as she has every time it's been put to her.

The firm the union disliked went. Firms accused of paying union bosses kept winning

The Age's investigation lays out the other side of the ledger. Two CFMEU aligned plastering firms accused in official reports of corrupt dealings with sacked union bosses, Expoconti and Express Interiors, won lucrative subcontracts at the $1.1 billion Frankston Hospital redevelopment, the very project Allan was promoting on Monday, and at Footscray Hospital, another Allan government Big Build health project.

The allegations against Expoconti were aired at the Queensland CFMEU commission of inquiry in February, where the union administration's corruption investigator Geoffrey Watson SC said emails revealed what he alleged was a "sham transaction": owner Nick Lee providing former Victorian union boss John Perkovic almost $50,000 for the cash purchase of a BMW. Perkovic was sacked from the union for corruption late last year. Lee denies all wrongdoing, telling The Age the money was a loan, "purely two friends helping each other", and that his firm wins hospital work on merit.

Express Interiors has been under Victoria Police investigation since 2019 over allegations it gave free labour and materials to former CFMEU boss Derek Christopher in return for his help getting the firm onto major projects. That investigation stalled, and Christopher now works for the firm as a part time safety coordinator. Managing director Greg Edwards says he helped renovate Christopher's home because the union boss's father asked him to, that he cooperated with the police investigation, and that Christopher ultimately paid for the work.

Put the two halves of the reporting together and the allegation is simple: on Labor's hospital sites, the plastering firm the CFMEU disliked was pushed out, while plastering firms facing corruption allegations kept winning work. King says he'd have no issue testifying about the Eye and Ear intervention before an independent inquiry. Allan still won't call one.

Two grillings in two days, and a Premier 19 points behind on trust

The hospital story landed a day after Allan spent Monday's press conference dodging questions about potholes, refusing to rate her own roads and refusing to say whether one damaged her car. Tuesday's answers followed the same script, and the polls show Victorians have noticed.

The polls disagree on who's in front, and neither version helps Labor. RedBridge's large sample July survey puts One Nation in the lead on 27% with the Coalition and Labor both on 26, while the latest Resolve Political Monitor has Labor and the Coalition tied on 27 with One Nation on 22. The numbers on the Premier herself are worse: Resolve puts Allan's net favourability at minus 36, and she trails Opposition Leader Jess Wilson as preferred premier by 19 points, 43% to 24%.

Wilson already has a no confidence motion waiting when parliament returns on 28 July, and corruption concerns on major projects are among its stated grounds. The IBAC report on the Andrews government is due to be unsealed on Friday. The pressure on the Premier is coming from every direction at once.

Allan's advice to anyone with evidence is to take it to the authorities. On 28 November, Victorians get to be the authority.