00:00The Premier Jacinda Ardern has again fronted media for the second day.
00:05She was responding to allegations aired this morning in the Nine Papers that she'd been
00:09warned about union misbehaviour, possible criminal behaviour by the CFMEU on big build
00:17government worksites.
00:19She alluded that she ignored those several years ago.
00:22Today she released some correspondence she sent to the Victorian Police Commissioner
00:27Shane Patton last year that showed that she had referred these concerns that were raised
00:32in a meeting with her bureaucrats to him.
00:35But she did throughout this press conference today effectively sheet home blame for some
00:39of the concerns to the Federal Government.
00:41She said industrial relations and workplace laws are the domain of the Federal Government
00:46in Canberra.
00:47She said that her government was making some big changes.
00:50They've already referred this to the Victorian Police, they've referred it to IBAC, the State's
00:54Anti-Corruption Commission.
00:55They're also launching an inquiry which is going to look at how the system works in Victoria
01:00in terms of what industrial oversight they have, where people who make complaints about
01:04issues on building sites can take those complaints and where they can be heard and what action
01:08can be taken.
01:09But that's all pushed off to an inquiry.
01:11The Government is still working on the terms of reference.
01:13She did concede, however, that it wasn't good enough that this complaint that was reported
01:18in The Age this morning that was about an Indigenous subcontracting firm who were bullied
01:24off a site.
01:25It took a long time for her office to respond to them.
01:28She was the Minister in charge of all these major infrastructure projects where these
01:31allegations are said to have taken place in terms of the influence of the CFMEU and the
01:37infiltration of criminal gangs.
01:38These were on major Victorian Government projects that received Victorian taxpayers' money and
01:43some of them also received Federal funding.
01:45So there's a lot of pressure on the Victorian Government to explain why it took so long,
01:48why it took the media to uncover this and this story still has a long way to play out.
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