Family First’s Jane Foreman says new Premier Ben Carroll’s overnight decision to call a Royal Commission into Big Build corruption vindicates months of pressure from Family First — but warns Victorians have every reason to doubt a government whose first instinct, even in its first hours under new management, is still to bury the truth rather than release it.
Family First has demanded a Big Build royal commission since corruption and organised crime allegations first aired on The Age and 60 Minutes in June, a call strengthened when KPI Group managing director Aaron Ramsay broke ranks in July to say he held direct knowledge of misconduct on Big Build worksites. New Premier Ben Carroll’s decision to call a royal commission in his first press appearance as Premier is proof that pressure worked — and proof Family First was right all along.
“Family First called this months ago, and Victorians are entitled to say: about time,” said Mrs Foreman. “But an overnight conversion to transparency, from a government that has spent a decade avoiding it, is not something anyone should take on faith.”
Mr Carroll is not new to this government. He has been Deputy Premier since October 2023 and a senior Cabinet minister since 2018, sitting at the table for every decision this government has made to dodge scrutiny of the Big Build and beyond. Reporting published the day after he became Premier shows exactly the instincts he inherits — and they are not instincts for openness.
Herald Sun reporting yesterday revealed the government delayed release of its 2024-25 Bushfire Risk Management report by a full year, then gutted it from 100 pages to 46, stripping out the spending detail regional communities rely on to know whether fuel reduction funding has been cut ahead of this summer’s bushfire season. The same reporting revealed the CFA was forced to withdraw its original 33-page response to the parliamentary bushfire inquiry after a Cabinet committee cut it to 18 pages — only for a cross-party Upper House committee to rebel and publish both versions anyway, exposing funding shortfalls, cost blowouts and delayed station builds.
Wild dog baiting targets have vanished from the government’s own management plans, deleted after earlier reporting exposed cuts of up to 66 per cent. And VicRoads has stopped publishing annual reports altogether, while contractors report funding cuts for the year ahead despite a $1 billion road blitz announced by the previous Premier in April.
“This is not one bad department, it’s a pattern,” said Mrs Foreman. “Bury the bushfire numbers, gag the CFA, delete the wild dog data, hide the road funding — and now we’re supposed to believe the same government will run an honest royal commission into itself.”
Family First will not accept a royal commission in name only. Its terms of reference must be genuinely independent, free of carve-outs and cabinet exemptions, with full public hearings and a guarantee that its findings are released in full — not shelved, redacted or buried the way this government has buried everything else that embarrasses it.
“A royal commission announced under pressure, by a Premier who was Deputy Premier for every day of this cover-up culture, needs real teeth or it’s just another exercise in managing the news cycle,” said Mrs Foreman. “Family First will be watching the terms of reference like a hawk, and Victoria needs a Legislative Council that will hold this Royal Commission — and this government — to its word.”
This is exactly why Victoria needs Family First in the Legislative Council after November: to make sure a royal commission that only started because of public pressure doesn’t quietly end the same way every other promise of transparency from this government has ended — delayed, watered down, or rewritten by the same people it’s meant to investigate.
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