Let’s turn to the reality of alleged corruption in Victoria, the second most populous, most indebted and worst credit rated state in Australia, because the challenge is on: Which of Australia’s political journalists will be the next Bethany McLean who wrote the story on Enron, to bring down a premier instead?

I ask because McLean, working for Fortune, exposed a specific case of gaslighting by Enron’s CEO in 2001 before the company became the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history at the time. Specific, because that gaslighting uncannily mirrored the exact behaviour of Victoria’s Labor premier Jacinta Allan recorded last Friday.

Last Friday, 20 February 2026, Allan had tried to shut down a press conference regarding an alleged $15B construction union fraud under her government’s watch, when a journalist asked a question about intimidation and then accused Allan of looking “disinterested”.

Having told other journalists to put up or shut up regarding the extent of any alleged fraud and take their homework to the police, Allan became agitated demanding, with the tone of a school teacher, that the journalist, “Retract!”

Well, the journalist didn’t.

Backtrack to McLean in the documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room” based on her Enron exposé, who told an eerily similar story of Jeff Skilling, Enron’s soon to be indicted CEO.

Despite numerous commercial failures and scrutiny of financial filings that never included regular balance sheets nor income statements, Enron had always reported a profit giving its share price rock star status. So, she’d asked Skilling: “How does Enron make its money?” Here’s how she described his response:

“He became really, really agitated: that people who raise questions like this were just trying to throw rocks at the company. And that I was not ethical because I hadn’t done enough homework, and if I’d done enough homework I would understand how off base my questions were.”

Isn’t it amazing how stories can find an unexpected reflection?

In Enron’s case it sent its CFO and CEO to jail (its chairman died of a heart attack before sentencing) and destroyed the global accounting giant Arthur Andersen.

Indeed, as the documentary’s narrator said of Andy Fastow, Enron’s CFO, who would later do five years after promising to spill the beans on his bosses:

“To please the boss Fastow had to find a way to keep the stock price up by hiding the fact that Enron was $30B in debt.”

Today in Victoria, whether it’s $6M or $15B or $30B in the case of a state government allegedly hiding its losses, the fact is we’re talking about alleged theft from the public purse: and Victorian taxpayers, like Enron’s shareholders and employees, want their money back.

Which journalist will break this case? Australians already note that when New South Wales state premier Gladys Berejiklian resigned in 2021 for her alleged involvement in a $70M fraud, she did so under the repeated questioning of Sky News Australia political editor Andrew Clennell, who set the ball rolling when he shouted out above a press conference din:

“Will you resign?”

And she said “no” and no again.

What should the potential fallout now be if there’s a fraud hundreds of times worse?

© 2026 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: Enron’s “Ask Why?” marketing. Public domain.