It has accused the government of mismanaging Lyttleton Terrace's major Galkangu govhub build.

A heavily redacted ministerial briefing has revealed a bureaucratic scramble in April, 2021, to cover shortfalls at the Lyttleton Terrace Galkangu building site.

The document - revealed under freedom of information laws - shows bureaucrats lobbied key government decision makers for an extra $9.5 million in 2021.

The government budgeted for what it called a "treasurer's advance" on top of the $16 million earmarked for the build in the 2018/19 state budget, the opposition says.

Unredacted sections of the document suggest money was needed to "expediently" solve a shortfall in funding for the building's ICT systems. Redactions make unclear how much was needed for that problem.

All redactions were made under a freedom of information exemption related to the commercial information of third parties or agencies.

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Liberal member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell said she believed ICT spends had been costed incorrectly.

"What this shows is that the government cannot handle projects, and it cannot handle money," she said.

"This is a 60 per cent error in the costings of this project."

A government spokesperson pointed to a larger sum of money covering the build, the purchase of the land and other costs.

"The Galkangu - Bendigo GovHub project is currently being delivered within its $120.8 million budget," they said late last week.

The Advertiser received word right on print deadline Friday night that the $16 million and $9.5 million were for the costs of site demolition and building fit out.

The government is leading two major builds in Bendigo's city centre right now - the new law courts at Mundy Street and the govhub building on Lyttleton Terrace.

That building will house government departmental workers along with staff from the City of Greater Bendigo.

It will have room for about 1000 people.

The opposition's accusations come ahead of a November election likely to be fought over who voters believe can best manage big projects.

The government has also started planning for Commonwealth Games events in Bendigo.

The games are three-and-a-half years away and councils with hosting rights say they need huge infrastructure builds to be ready in time.

Ballarat's council recently said it would need to cram 10 years worth of projects into three.

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The City of Greater Bendigo is yet to reveal its wish list but is unlikely to confine itself to an athletes' village and sportsground retrofits.

It is openly dreaming of a sweeping Bendigo Art Gallery redevelopment and councillors have publicly floated a host of their own ideas, including better public transport and faster internet.

Last month, Ms Lovell raised concerns about potential govhub blowouts during a heated exchange in parliament's upper house.

Regional development minister Harriet Shing took issue with the way Ms Lovell framed the question and "the way that you conduct your narrative outside this place".

She said the government needed "to manage the project as it continues to be developed and to be delivered".

"We are doing that after having allocated that $16 million, and we will continue to manage the project until it works as it deserves to," Ms Shing said.

The opposition has been monitoring the Govhub build since the government first revealed plans to buy the Lyttleton Street site off of the City of Greater Bendigo and knock the mid-20th century offices down.

It has revealed it has obtained a heavily redacted document showing a $9.5 million "Treasurer's advance".

The opposition believes that money came on top of the $16 million build budget.

The document is a ministerial briefing paper prepared for the then-regional development Mary-Anne Thomas in April 2021.

Unredacted sections of the document suggest bureaucrats were scrambling to cover a shortfall in "Information and Communication technology (ICT) obligations"

Bureaucrats had settled on a so-called "Treasurer's advance" to solve the ICT funding shortfall "expediently".

The document shows personnel in Ms Thomas's office backed the plan, as did the influential Department of Treasury and Finance and the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Treasurer Tim Pallas had already given in-principal support for the money, assuming Regional Development Victoria could not fund savings elsewhere.

Both the treasurer's office and the treasury department "acknowledged a separate gap to be part of a future request for a Treasurer's Advance".

ICT shortfalls were not the only challenges bureaucrats faced.

The document also gives an insight into the scramble to deal with everything archeologists had just discovered underneath the site.

Rumours that a treasure-trove underneath the City of Greater Bendigo's old Lyttleton Terrace site began circulating over the summer of 2020/2021.

By April, archeologists had revealed the richest dig in regional Victoria's history to journalists, who toured the site.

Up to 30 archeologists were bagging and catalogueing 67,000 objects and counting (that figure has since risen to 150,000, according to the government).

Journalists walked amid the footings of a pub's cellar and watched as archeologists carefully brushed away stray dirt to reveal a cat buried in what had once been someone's backyard.

Behind closed doors, government agencies were reporting that the $2 million originally set aside for the dig would not be enough.

They had originally expected the excavations to last six weeks but the project had become a "protracted, time consuming and significant excavation", bureaucrats said in the briefing document.

They warned the minister that the dig could extend into the second half of 2021.

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The government has now told the Bendigo Advertiser that it built in an extra "early works contingency" so that the archeological dig did not impact the govhub's overall budget.

But the April 2021 briefing depicts bureaucrats still working out exactly how to pay for the unexpected discoveries beneath Bendigo.

The briefing document shows government agency Development Victoria had already forked out money to cover costs.

Bureaucrats at agency Rural and Regional Victoria were lobbying the government to pay Development Victoria back .

They made it clear Development Victoria had authorised additional costs without their consent but argued the agency had no other option "given the extent of the heritage items discovered which has put them in an unavoidable position".

It is not clear how much money Development Victoria wanted reimbursement for, and how much it might have got.

The sum was redacted.

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