November 9, 2026 — 7:05pm

Chris Young, KC, talks fast and barely stumbles. The lead counsel assisting the inelegantly named Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria, spent most of the first substantive day of hearings reading from documents.

Players in Victoria’s Big Build have already handed over 110,000 of them and Young, who it appears is well across his brief, used them to paint a series of quick-fire word pictures.

The CFMEU had “unprecedented” access to the state government of Jacinta Allan and Daniel Andrews because of their personal and factional links, he said, reading from a note prepared by John Holland, one of the nation’s largest construction companies.

At the Gap Road level crossing removal site – the subject of these hearings – documents revealed the union’s hard nuts sat on water barriers, made multiple so-called “health and safety” complaints, filmed workers and threatened to “smash” others who turned up for their…