Supers: 00:02 – Nicole Asher, Reporting 00:03 – Jacinta Allan, Premier of Victoria Script: It really does feel like the Premier is fighting for her political life here in Victoria and these allegations that have been aired in Queensland are incredible and dramatic, I mean going from the $50 million Jeffrey Watson who has into looking into wrongdoing CFMEU basically says it is funnelled from Victorian taxpayers directed to crime syndicates. The Premier has largely tried to avoid talking about anything from the past, we tried to press her multiple times about what she knew and when as we have done in months previously, and each time, she tried to direct her answer to the future, saying that there has been an independent review into the wrongdoing here in Victoria, there have been legal changes made to basically make that harder for those future, and to make it easier for police and other authorities to crack down on any wrongdoing, and they were answers we heard repeatedly throughout this press conference. It was the first time she stood up since these allegations were made public yesterday avoiding the media yesterday afternoon and even avoiding sending out a statement addressing the issue but let’s take a sample of this repeated sample we heard this morning. “We need action immediately importantly to, supporting the work of the federal administrator who has a very challenging and difficult job, but he has moved quickly. these bad actors are not involved in the union, and they are not involved in industry, and we are supporting the work of the administrator. I want to make it absolutely clear that I and my government have a for this alleged behaviour. And indeed, during my time as Minister, when allegations had raised with me, I referred allegations to the relevant authorities.” Now, this 15 billion dollar figure that’s been raised, the Premier takes exception to that and says it is untested and cannot be relied upon and Geoffrey Watson says it is an estimate but what he says is it is a conservative estimate and when asked whether the Premier launch a Royal Commission to test that and find out exactly what was involved in the systematic nature of this wrongdoing, her answer was, no, Royal Commissions have been held in the past and they're just a delay tactic and don't fix the problem and when asked whether she would be held responsible, she was the relevant minister at the responsible as the Premier now and time wrongdoing was happening, asked if she was answer was a very emphatic no.
