The Bendigo sky was bright blue, and the state’s second female premier was beaming. Seventy-three new homes were ready to welcome their new occupants, making this a day of triumph for state and federal Labor.
“Every Victorian family deserves a safe home – Labor is delivering that in Bendigo and across Victoria,” then-premier Jacinta Allan said in her statement marking the completion of the St Andrews social housing development.
Victoria’s then-housing minister Harriet Shing used the event to attack the Liberals for turning “their backs on regional Victoria” while Labor delivered “thousands of new social housing homes”.
Helping cut the ribbon for the cameras, federal member for Bendigo, Lisa Chesters, described the state and federal-funded project as evidence of “what happens when Labor governments work together”.
But the public political plaudits delivered on that sunny Bendigo footpath told only some of the $44 million development’s story.
Recently, about 30 Chinese plasterers travelled to Melbourne’s CBD to help cast light on an untold chapter of the project.
Dressed in their work gear, with plaster-stained hands and white dust in their hair, these workers claimed they were all ripped off by an underworld-linked venture that secured work across a raft of major projects, including the Bendigo housing venture.
These workers’ allegations lead to players from Melbourne’s gangland scene and the incurious major construction firms doing business with them. There are also unresolved claims of corruption inside the CFMEU.
This story is also more than just another scandal to spill out of Victoria’s construction sector like those already being probed by the royal commission called by Allan’s replacement, Premier Ben Carroll.
The decision of these Chinese workers to emerge from the shadows in which they typically toil reveals a deeply hidden aspect of the state’s construction underbelly – the suspected systemic exploitation of foreign workers at the bottom of the food chain.
The men who posed for a photo near Southern Cross Station are part of a massive Chinese worker underclass forming the backbone of Victoria’s corruption-ridden plastering trade.
Their decision to speak out is exceedingly rare, but it is already stirring change in the multibillion-dollar industry and, once again, leaving the state Labor government squirming.
After fielding questions from The Age, construction giant Hansen Yuncken said it had ordered an investigation into whether it missed the alleged underworld links in its supply chain and underpayment of foreign workers on the Bendigo housing site.
The Albanese government-appointed CFMEU administrator Michael Crosby has also promised action, attacking major contractors such as Hansen Yuncken and the ASX-listed Shape for failing to detect suspected misconduct while conceding the union has been part of the problem.
“The treatment of Chinese workers in both NSW and Victoria is a major concern to the union and is akin to slavery,” says Crosby.
“We know that in both states, workers in plastering trades are paid cash in hand amounts of between $20 and $40 per hour – far below the applicable EBA rate. They receive no superannuation or redundancy contributions. Workers’ compensation payments are not paid.”
Under the CFMEU’s plastering agreement, workers are meant to get about $60 an hour plus superannuation and other benefits, including overtime and sick pay. Australian law provides that workers must get a minimum of at least about $34 an hour, as well as superannuation and other allowances.
The 30-odd plasterers who assembled outside Southern Cross station to meet The Age say they are each owed between $5000 and $30,000, with the total amount of unpaid wages claimed to be well over $2 million.
Some worked on the Bendigo site, where they say they were promised up to $55 an hour cash in hand minus an accommodation charge to sleep in crowded quarters. They claim that, in some cases, they have received less than half what they are owed.
Others worked on developments in inner-city Melbourne, or on the refurbishment of the Yarra Valley Grammar School in Ringwood. Several were anticipating working on Labor’s $94 million 94-bed expansion of the Hopkins Correctional Centre in Ararat.
One plasterer claims he was owed $10,000 in unpaid wages, after being promised $45 an hour in cash working on large commercial projects but was never fully paid.
In addition to their unpaid wages, the workers allege they never received superannuation, overtime or leave.
They say they want to keep their full names private because they are worried about getting a “visit” to their homes from unnamed parties who would prefer they stay silent. Some of these workers are also worried about authorities pursuing them for unpaid tax or breaching their visa conditions.
“We want money we are owed,” says one worker in broken English, as he provided contracts and paperwork to back up the underpayment claims.
“Life becomes very difficult [without the money I am owed]. Me and the boys [other workers] can’t pay [our] mortgage.”
The enterprise these workers blame for exploiting them goes by two names – Multitude Plaster Commercial and, more recently, Metro Plaster. It is partly controlled by two heavily tattooed brothers, Jake and Zach Boyer, each with their own underworld and bikie gang-links.
Hansen Yuncken engaged the Boyer brothers’ firm on the Bendigo housing project that Allan opened in March. Another major construction firm, Shape, engaged the Boyers’ plastering venture on the still-unfinished redevelopment of the RMIT university site at 235 Bourke Street.
The Boyer boys are well known in Melbourne gangland circles for running a tattoo parlour chain and a mixed martial arts fighting competition founded by a drug trafficker now in jail, as well as for their own brushes with the law.
Much less clear is how the Boyers’ plastering enterprise ended up winning contracts across the state’s construction sector despite obvious red flags that the firm may not be the ideal candidate to help build large projects, taxpayer-funded social housing or to refurbish a state prison (the Boyers’ firm has won a contract with another major builder, Kane Constructions, to provide plastering services at the Hopkins jail rebuild).
Had Shape, Hansen Yuncken or Kane reviewed publicly available records or tender documents, they would have discovered the involvement of the Boyers in both Multitude Commercial and Metro Plaster.
A Google check would have – in turn – revealed that Jake Boyer was jailed for 18 months in 2015 for his role as the getaway driver for a shotgun-armed Comanchero bikie crew that tortured and robbed a drug dealer. Zack Boyer would have been outed as a man previously convicted of recklessly causing injury and, on a separate occasion, who received a 12-month adjourned undertaking after police raided his home and discovered cocaine, cannabis, human growth hormone, knuckledusters and two mobile phones.
Having signed contracts with the Boyers’ firm, project managers at Shape’s Bourke Street site and Hansen Yuncken’s Bendigo project could hardly have missed the teams of Chinese plasterers with minimal English arriving every day. Industry insiders say that, in a sector in which the exploitation of Chinese workers is notorious, this was another glaring red flag. So, too, was the fact that Multitude had been undercutting its rivals to win work.
“We used them [Multitude] because they were the cheapest firm,” one company manager, whose firm works on the Big Build, told The Age on Tuesday.
According to this manager, there was a second factor at play: “They [the Boyers] were pushed by the CFMEU.”
The Age spoke to several of the Chinese plasterers who worked with either Multitude or Metro Plaster, along with those who dealt with the Boyers as they promoted their plastering business, to trace the rise of the brothers in the construction sector.
In 2023, the Boyers went into business with the owner of an already established plastering firm, Multitude Plaster (which collapsed earlier this year owing millions to creditors), and created a new arm of the business called Multitude Plaster Commercial. It eventually spun off into Metro Plaster. The Boyers founded the two firms to win larger projects, including those on the Big Build or in inner-city Melbourne or the CBD.
According to industry insiders, the Boyers claimed they operated with the backing of the CFMEU, including a senior union organiser called Rhett Campbell.
“They were using their ties to Rhett to tell us they could win us work with union backing,” alleges one insider from a Big Build subcontractor who met the Boyers in 2024. This insider claims the Boyers suggested their company sponsor their MMA business, the Hex Fighting Series, in return for accessing their union largesse.
Sources whose firms had direct dealings with Campbell alleged to The Age that he used his status as a CFMEU organiser to make representations on behalf of the Boyers on at least two occasions.
One allegedly involved demanding a large construction firm pay a disputed debt to Multitude. The second allegedly involved Campbell promoting the brothers’ firm because of the “good work” the Boyers’ company had performed on Shape’s Bourke Street project, where Chinese workers now claim they were ripped off.
Corporate records reveal the Boyers formed a partnership with a Chinese businessman, Ye Tao, who owns a chunk of Metro Plaster shares and runs his own plastering firm, WCP Pty, which has a CFMEU-backed enterprise bargaining agreement. In September 2025, the CFMEU signed a new EBA with Multitude Plaster Commercial, giving it the union’s imprimatur to operate on major projects on the condition it paid workers all their wages and entitlements.
The Chinese workers say this simply didn’t happen. The workers claim they believed the union was there to protect the Boyers, rather than their workforce.
When one worker complained to Zach Boyer about outstanding wages, he claims he received an angry text calling him a “dog” who Boyer would “spit” on.
The Boyers could not be reached for contact and did not respond to efforts to reach them via text message.
Ye Tao insists his dealings with the Boyers are limited to more recent Metro Plaster jobs and denies any knowledge of underpayment of workers. Ye says he is unconcerned by the Boyers’ criminal histories, describing how he judges the pair on their “future, not past”.
Ye also says Metro Plaster directly employs no plasterers. Rather, it secures subcontracts from major companies such as Shape and then engages its own subcontractors, who in turn employ Chinese plasterers.
“Whatever they do behind the scene, I don’t know. I have no clue. If these subcontractors are paying cash, it is their business, it has nothing to do with us,” says Ye.
“We [Ye and the Boyers] don’t do anything illegal or anything stupid.”
He also said he was taking legal action over what he claimed was defective work or over payments Metro Plaster alleged it was owed.
Shape Australia did not respond to specific questions about its relationship with the Boyers’ firm on its Bourke Street project, beyond stating that it requires its subcontractors “to provide assurance, including statutory declarations, that they are meeting their obligations to the people they engage, including paying workers their correct entitlements”.
Shape’s claim that it has a system of checks and balances in place to ensure workers aren’t mistreated appears at odds with Ye’s claim to know nothing of the pay and conditions of the Chinese workers performing the work on Shape’s project.
Meanwhile, Shape said it was aware that the Boyers’ company was relying on other subcontractors to undertake the ASX-listed company’s plastering work.
“Shape is not a party to the contract between our subcontractor, Multitude Plaster Commercial Pty Ltd, and its sub-subcontractor,” the Shape spokesperson said.
“Shape is not involved in the dispute between those parties and is not aware of all the details of that dispute.”
Ye said that his Metro Plaster ventures with the Boyers relied on three other subcontractors to engage the Chinese plasterers, but he did not respond to a request to provide these firms’ details so they, too, could be quizzed about the underpayment claims.
Hansen Yuncken also said in a statement that it applied checks and balances when engaging Multitude. But it has gone far further than Shape, vowing to order an independent inquiry to determine if any contractual or procedural requirements were breached.
“When it comes to the subcontractor [Multitude] in question, Hansen Yuncken can confirm that we have only engaged that organisation once and not since our social housing project in Bendigo,” a company statement said.
“Suggestions that a subcontractor has underpaid or not paid their employees are deeply concerning.
“Our family-owned and run organisation has no tolerance for unlawful or inappropriate conduct in all its operations, especially on our project sites.”
The CFMEU’s role in the rise of Multitude in Victoria’s building industry also raises serious questions for union administrator Michael Crosby.
After organiser Rhett Campbell’s ties to Multitude were first revealed by The Age in July, he was called in by Crosby, who has the backing of the Albanese government to clean up the CFMEU.
It is not known what Campbell told Crosby nor whether the administrator asked Campbell about his debt-recovery efforts or promotion of Multitude, but Campbell remains a senior CFMEU organiser.
Crosby this week said Campbell’s involvement was under “active investigation”.
“The union that I lead does not protect any employers. My fundamental job is to do what I can to clean up the industry and ensure that bad actors do not have a place or a role in the construction industry,” Crosby said.
“I am supportive of any proposal to introduce a fit and proper person test for all industry participants.”
Campbell did not respond to calls from The Age.
In a separate case in NSW, where disgraced former NSW CFMEU boss Darren Greenfield is serving a jail sentence for being bribed by a Chinese plastering company owner who was rorting his workers, Crosby is several months into his campaign to clean up the sector.
“That process has started to work in NSW. One company has paid backpay of $750,000. Another has been wound up owing some $5 million,” he said in a statement.
Crosby says he is “confident” he can extend his campaign into Victoria and has urged Chinese workers to contact his administration. Whether it will work is less clear.
“We are hampered by the very high level of fear from these workers. They fear retaliation from their employers against them here and against their families in China,” Crosby says.
“They are told that the union is corrupt and that the employers will buy the union off. They are threatened with deportation as a result of any breaches of their visa conditions.”
Many in the industry are deeply sceptical that Crosby can clean up Victoria’s plastering trade, given its long and sordid history of involvement with organised crime fixers, covert union deals and underpayment.
Crosby’s most senior Victorian CFMEU official, Jason Deans, recently told a closed meeting of union delegates that up to “90 per cent” of Victoria’s commercial plastering sector may be involved in financial crime and worker exploitation.
“It needs to stop. It needs to stop,” Deans said.
“We are not going to fix the plastering [industry] in five minutes. It is going to take 18 months or two years.”
For Premier Ben Carroll, the claims of underpayment and gangland links on the taxpayer-funded Bendigo project add to the still-growing list of scandals involving underworld companies turning up on Labor’s signature $109 billion Big Build program.
Just last week, The Age revealed a heavy machinery firm owned by an accused cocaine trafficker and ex-bikie was operating on the M80 and North East Link.
Carroll’s response to the still-unfolding scandal is to highlight his own role calling the royal commission headed by Christopher Kourakis.
Whether it can get to the bottom of how gangland-linked firms found work on taxpayer-funded projects is an open question.
The Chinese workers chasing their unpaid wages are deeply distrustful of authorities.
If they can allegedly be ripped off on a taxpayer-funded project opened by no less than Victoria’s now former premier, will a royal commission called by her replacement deliver real and lasting change?
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