Ben Carroll wants to be Premier of Victoria. The person running his office is Fiona Ward, his Chief of Staff. Her career is documented in public professional records. Read it carefully.
She began as a campaign manager for Bill Shorten. She then became an adviser in the office of the Minister for Police and Corrections from 2014 to 2016, the portfolio Carroll would later hold as minister. From 2016 to 2017 she was the Senior Adviser to the Minister for Industry and Employment and Minister for Resources, the exact portfolio Carroll took over in October 2017 when he became minister. She was the senior adviser in his future role before he arrived.
Then she moved into the Big Build itself.
From 2019 she became Senior Government Relations Manager at Rail Projects Victoria, the agency delivering the Metro Tunnel, the North East Link and the level crossing removal program.
She was there while the Big Build was under active construction. She was there during the period Geoffrey Watson found that CFMEU corruption was operating systematically across those same construction sites, extortion, ghost shifts, organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs inflating costs by an estimated $15 billion.
From 2019 to 2020 she was also General Manager, Government and Stakeholder Relations at Metro Trains Melbourne, the operator of the Metro Tunnel network. The same tunnel whose costs blew out from $11 billion to $15.5 billion.
The same tunnel whose contingency was drawn down faster than expected and whose risk-sharing arrangements were re-cut after financial close, according to the Victorian Auditor-General.
She left the Big Build agencies in 2020. She became Director of the Office of the CEO at the City of Melbourne. Then in 2023 she became Chief of Staff to Ben Carroll when he became Deputy Premier.
Now hold all of that alongside what the Victorian Ministerial Register of Interests shows.
Carroll’s father-in-law sits on the board of Nilsen, a $499 million electrical contractor that delivered works on the Metro Tunnel and won the electrical fit-out contract for the North East Link. Carroll was the Minister for Public Transport overseeing those projects from 2020 to 2023. He is now Minister for WorkSafe, regulating the construction sites where Nilsen is currently working.
His Chief of Staff has direct institutional knowledge of Rail Projects Victoria and Metro Trains — the agencies that procure and manage the contracts that companies like Nilsen deliver.
Carroll sat in every cabinet meeting that refused to call a royal commission into the $15 billion in alleged corruption on those same Big Build projects.
His Chief of Staff worked inside those projects during the period the corruption was allegedly operating. His wife’s family company was contracted to deliver work on those same projects.
Watson found there was both ad hoc corruption by former organisers and delegates, and systemic corruption involving collaboration by some in the union with outlaw motorcycle gangs and other crime outfits.
The Allan government referred the Big Build to the Victorian anti-corruption watchdog in 2024. But the agency cannot investigate this, as it lacks “follow the money” powers to investigate projects subcontracted to the private sector.
Carroll is challenging to be the Premier who would decide whether to finally call a royal commission with those powers.
The ministerial register is public. The career history is public. The corruption findings are public. The cabinet decisions are public.
Nobody assembled them in one place until now.
None of it is illegal. That’s the problem.
What’s your thoughts…?
Peter Lyndon-James
