Nick McKenzie

Why does this matter?

I mean, this is the money of your listeners.

Anyone listening to this podcast is funding those projects and by extension funding the gangland figures that are feeding off them.

It's leading to increases ultimately in house prices and rail projects, road projects.

So not enough is clearly being done.

A real issue is lots of the dodgy behaviour in the construction industry, it might be unlawful and certainly unethical,

or corrupt, but it may not be criminal.

Bikey gang member gets a sweetheart job, care of union corruption on a big government project and hires half his bikey gang as traffic controllers on 300 grand a year.

It's certainly corrupt.

It may not be criminal.

The act of nepotism, it's a grade corruption.

Cops can't investigate that, but an anti-corruption agency can if it has the power.

And the problem in Victoria right now is no agency has the power to investigate this sort of conduct.

I mean, how can you not be frustrated?

I'm a taxpayer like everybody else.

And, you know, my 20 years as an investigative reporter, never have I come across such an obvious corruption scandal that's been met with such a poor response.

Now, let's bring this back to where we started.

Mick Gatto, on paper, has been rated for relatively minor offending.

It's just alleged and he denies it.

That's to say nothing of all the many hundreds of millions of dollars on major government projects that have gone to bikey clubs and other dodgy people, companies that should never have got contracts, which have got contracts.