How the Underworld Controls a Government Build — and Why Enforcement Keeps Losing

Nick McKenzie's 60 Minutes investigation laid out, in detail, how organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gang figures came to exert control over parts of Victoria's Big Build — one of the largest public infrastructure programs in the country. It is a story about money, leverage and the quiet accommodations that let criminal influence become part of how major projects get delivered.

Daniel Baulch — a former Victoria Police detective and senior anti-corruption executive — appears in the program to explain what the evidence actually shows, and why it matters far beyond a single project.

Criminal networks don't force their way onto a worksite; they make themselves useful, then indispensable. Access, industrial peace and 'problem-solving' get traded for money, and once those arrangements are embedded they are extremely hard to unwind. Companies keep paying because the cost of not paying — delay, disruption, risk — is higher.

That is the uncomfortable logic at the heart of the story: the system rewards paying, and punishes those who try to walk away.

The fact that companies were still paying, despite years of scrutiny, points to something structural. Police and regulators can investigate individual conduct, but they often lack the powers, resources and coordination to dismantle an entrenched system that spans industrial relations, procurement and organised crime at the same time.

Enforcement that treats each incident in isolation will always be one step behind an enterprise that adapts faster than the agencies chasing it.

Daniel's central argument is that these networks endure because they behave less like gangs than like businesses — diversifying, managing relationships and exploiting the same institutional weaknesses that defeat one enforcement strategy after another. Understanding that is the first step to designing controls, laws and integrity systems that can actually hold.

Broadcast on Channel 9.