The following material on the Operation Watts IBAC enquiry into allegations of corrupt conduct involving Victorian public officers related to Victorian ALP branch stacking is taken from the Age and the Guardian coverage and the IBAC website. “Significant cultural change within the party” is needed.
IBAC, (the Victorian Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission) is holding public hearings into allegations of serious corrupt conduct involving Victorian public officers, including Members of Parliament. The hearings are part of Operation Watts, a coordinated investigation between IBAC and the Victorian Ombudsman, which is looking into a range of matters including allegations of ‘branch stacking’ in the Victorian Branch of the ALP, as first publicly revealed by The Age and 60 Minutes June 2020.
The hearings are presided over by IBAC Commissioner The Honourable Robert Redlich AM, QC. Counsel assisting is Chris Carr SC of the Victorian Bar. The hearing is expected to last at least four weeks.
Many witnesses were examined in private, before these public hearings, and parts of the public hearings were removed from public view. None of the witnesses are permitted to discuss evidence until their confidentiality obligations are lifted, most likely at the conclusion of these public hearings. People may report any information at www.ibac.vic.gov.au/report.
IBAC is not empowered to investigate breaches of internal political party rules, or the rules of any non-government organisation. It’s key questions in this enquiry are whether:
- public officers, including members of parliament, are directing ministerial or electorate office staff to perform party‐political work when they should be doing ministerial or electorate work.
- grants by the Victorian government to community associations, have been misused
- if those involved in granting the funds have “dishonestly performed their functions” or “knowingly or recklessly breached public trust”.
- any public officer or their associates, received a personal benefit arising
- what systems and controls are in place to monitor these monies.
In March 2018, the Victorian Ombudsman reported on the 2014 ‘red shirts affair’, a scheme whereby some electorate officers were diverted from electorate work to campaign for the 2014 ALP state election. She found some members of parliament had behaved improperly, including Adem Somyurek MP, who himself described the red shirts affair as a ‘premeditated and systematic rort’ and ‘systematic corruption designed to misappropriate taxpayer resources for the benefit of the party’.
However, in the first half of 2020, the IBAC obtained information suggesting a continued rorting of taxpayer resources, as first revealed in the The Age and 60 Minutes June 2020.
Arising from this expose, Premier Daniel Andrews proposed the intervention, writing to the ALP National Executive 16 June 2020: “I have no confidence in the integrity of any voting rolls that are produced for any internal elections in the Victorian Branch.” He said “Labor has a significant problem. He proposed and secured, with the support of Labor Leader Anthony Albanese, a National ALP Executive intervention into the Victorian branch to address the endemic problems. Daniel Andrews said he had always followed the party’s rules, and had spent 18 months attempting to clean up the party, but that the process “may well not be over”. [See also an August 2021 update on the continuity of the federal intervention.]
As the witnesses hearings wind up, Jennifer Beacham said at the Open Labor and Independents Reclaim the Party forum:
“I went through the eleven days of public hearings at IBAC and created a spreadsheet listing the people and branches named. 79 people are named, some many times. Of 56 checked 44 are still ALP members at 21 November. So assurances that it is all OK – ‘nothing to see here’ is not convincing.
“Those of us who grew up in the Whitlam years do find these actions hard to grasp. But more recent generations have grown up with the ALP in power and the rewards that go with that – electorate office staff positions, ministerial staff positions. The opportunity to dispense largess sets a very different culture.
“The ALP was asked to contribute to that inquiry and chose not to. I understand that. But that does not absolve us inside the party from dealing with the systematic and wholesale corruption of party processes that are outlined in the IBAC transcripts. “
Hearings day 1: evidence from Anthony Byrne; Luke Donnellan quits Victorian cabinet
On 11 Oct 2021 Luke Donnellan, Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers, and for Child Protection, announced his resignation within hours of branch stacking enquiry commencement following evidence from federal Labor MP Anthony Byrne, Member for Holt (SE Melbourne). Donnellan said “I never misused party funds or resources in any way. And this has absolutely nothing to do with my staff.” Donnellan is the fourth minister to resign or be sacked arising from the June 2020 allegations.
When Somyurek was the convener of the moderates, Byrne agreed he worked closely with him, until they fell out around 2016 or 2017. Byrne said he had paid around $2000 in annual memberships since elected in 1999. He said Adem Somyurek and Luke Donnellan did about the same or more. He said two men were employed on taxpayer-funded salaries by his electorate office but never showed up to work. He recounted rerouting electoral postage stamps for factional gain, other office irregularities, and ethnic branch stacking activities.
Anthony Albanese said he would stand by Byrne as he did not want to pre-empt the outcome of the Ibac investigation. He said: “we intervened, strongly, immediately, decisively, into the Victorian branch, to make sure that no one can gain any advantage from any improper practices.” He has asked the finance department if Donnellan has breached rules.
The federal Shadow Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, said Byrne had acted as a whistleblower and had been thanked by counsel assisting Ibac Robert Redlich. “It is Mr Byrne’s work that has led to this being uncovered.” [Dreyfus ran an inquiry aimed at branch stacking in the Victorian division in 1998]. Other reports see this as very charitable.
Former Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said: “I find it embarrassing as a proud Labor person, that these antics have been going on such an industrial scale, if the allegations are correct. I think it turns people off politics. It doesn’t reflect the hard work of so many genuine ALP members and MPs. So it’s shameful, but at least Ibac’s looking at it. That’s the power of having an anti-corruption commission.”
A call for significant cultural change within the party
Banyule Mayor Cr. Rick Garotti finished his evidence on 19 October saying: “Given the significance of this investigation and the coverage and deep dive of it, I suspect there will be significant cultural change within the party, change that is probably under way for the better… I’m not excusing my behaviour in the party, but hopefully for a young person coming through the ranks in the future, it’s a better culture, and they don’t get caught up.”
Rick Garotti resigned from the ALP February 2021 and therefore did not have to go before the ALP Disputes Committee regarding allegations. Cr. Garotti resigned as Banyule mayor on completion of his IBAC hearing.
Mr Carr summed up Tuesday’s shocking allegations saying: “This system of factional patronage it involved you and others in various acts of dishonesty … it involved you and others engaging in, in various ways, the obtaining of public resources and public funds for factional purposes … it involved looking after factional allies, giving them paid but fictional jobs … and this is all done, isn’t it, in order to pursue power – power for the faction, power within the party, power politically … and it’s the influence that people who have power are able to exercise over these processes that allows them to continue to recruit the likes of you to engage in these sorts of activities, isn’t it?” Cr. Rick Garotti responded: “Correct.”
Witness Adam Sullivan, a former Somyurek electoral officer testified: “We chose repeatedly to do the wrong thing again and again and again and again. And ultimately the choice was that we put our own interests, and our own loyalty to a factional machine and a system of patronage above the interests of the public.”
Witness Adem Somyurek 7–9 Nov 2021
There was three days of confusion inducing testimony to IBAC from former Victorian government minister Adem Somyurek, the main subject of this 2021 IBAC Watts investigation and the Sixty Minutes/Age expose June 2020. Somyurek was often cautioned to answer questions directly and “focus on the questions rather than the speeches you’d like to give”. Misdirections were common. Somyurek routinely mentioned the factional activities of others when asked about his personal experience of branch stacking. Somyurek’s moments of clarity seemed related to Premier Daniel Andrews plus other Labor leaders Richard Marles and Stephen Conroy. He claimed Bill Shorten’s 2013 changed membership requirements encouraged branch stacking across the state.
As Somyurek possibly knows more than any others about Victorian ALP corrupt practices, we must listen. IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich stated that Somyurek is “living proof of the consequences of being brought up over decades in this unethical culture.” Somyurek agreed, before adding, “The trick is not to just think it’s me, and I’m an aberration, and I’m an outlier. I’m not.”
Somyurek and his tax payer staff organised for the Right faction, ran right-wing branch meetings, harvesting ballot papers from members of stacked-out branches before filling them out in bulk to secure preselection of allies. On Day 1 from Anthony Byrne MP that Somyurek would spend about $2,000 a year on other people’s party memberships, and he estimated he began doing that when he was elected in 2002.
The Guardian notes that Somyurek said “if you’re a person of an ethnic minority, there might be a rationalisation” behind branch stacking, that for ethnic minorities branch stacking was a “sort of affirmation action by stealth”, and that MPs in safe electorates tried to stay away from stacking. He described the alliance between himself and other MPs, which allowed the “pooling” of staff to further Somyurek’s faction, as “a loose alliance of independent groupings”. He did not know exactly what was occurring in the electorate offices of those MPs, nor what each MP was directing their workers to do.
Somyurek said he “lost all perspective” during a fierce factional battle and should be “condemned” for his behaviour during the period. “I got initiated into this culture and it was all intertwined. It’s all been intertwined, anyway I’ll leave it at that.”
Somyurek compared his actions to Premier Daniel Andrews dismissing his concerns over the Victorian Labor’s red shirts scandal (a $388,000 scheme involving parliamentary allowances to pay Labor political campaign staff before the 2014 election). Somyurek said that when the Victorian ombudsman did not come down harder on the Red Shirts scandal, he and others within the party thought, “it is carte blanche” to do as they wanted with electorate office staff.
Asked about Somyurek’s claims, Andrews said Labor had made “a number of important rule changes” since the 2018 Victorian ombudsman’s investigation into the scheme. He said the party was “deeply regretful” of the red shirts affair, had already accepted responsibility for it and that he would appear before IBAC if asked to. Andrews had earlier said with respect to 1990s Holt electorate factional fights that he had never paid for someone else’s Labor Party membership and he followed the party rules.
Somyurek said :“I wrote it all down in my book.” Since addressing IBAC, Somyurek posed as an defender of democracy and pledging his upper-house vote against Daniel Andrews’s pandemic laws, receiving praise from the Daily Mail and Murdoch’s Herald Sun.
Reclaim our party
Harry Stratton in the Jacobin Magazine writes that Somuyurek was right, that Corruption and Patronage Are the Norm in the Australian Labor Party. That the the nepotism and cronyism he practiced are just part of the day-to-day running of the Australian Labor Party (eg Obeid, McDonald, Tripodi).
Somyurek said “there are no good guys in the Labor Party” and the Age commented “It’s no doubt that this aspect of Mr Somyurek’s evidence is true”
However, Independent and Administrative Committee Member said “Somyurek is simply wrong – there are many, many good members of Victorian Labor, rank and file members and parliamentarians who give their all for their party and their community and don’t go within a bull’s roar of branch stacking or corrupt behaviour.
“The trouble has been that those who have indulged in branch stacking, have been allowed to wield extraordinary power because too many at the top of the organisational tree were prepared to ignore the gross stacking they knew was rife rather than take it on.
“The IBAC inquiry along with many of the Bracks–Macklin reforms give the party the chance to draw a line and improve the party but it won’t happen without assertive party action and inclusion of members.”
The Independents and Open Labor held an online Reclaim Our Party forum 1 December 2021 on ways forward for Victorian Labor and have forwarded proposals and requests arising to the National ALP Executive.
Other actions arising
Sumeyya Ilanbey reports in The Age * Dec 2021, “the Andrews government has ordered a review into gambling and multicultural affairs grants awarded under the tenure of fallen ministers Marlene Kairouz and Robin Scott following damning allegations at an anti-corruption hearing that public funds were misused for factional purposes.
“In November 2021, the Department of Justice and Community Safety established an independent audit into the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation’s grant processes,” a government spokeswoman said.
“KPMG will conduct the audit into the gambling grants, and is expected to wrap it up early next year. Meanwhile, Multicultural Affairs Minister Ros Spence has asked Price Waterhouse Coopers to investigate grants awarded to the Somali Australian Council of Victoria, which are also under IBAC scrutiny.”
Diary of events to date
Download complete hearing transcripts.
11–12 Oct 2021
- Opening address by Counsel Chris Carr
- Witness Labor MP Anthony Byrne, Member for Holt
- Luke Donnellan MP quits Victorian cabinet after Byrne alleges he paid others’ membership fees.
13 Oct 2021
- Witness Ellen Schreiber (2019 former ministerial adviser / executive assistant)
- Up to 80% of her taxpayer-funded work was on branch stacking, often with staff from the ministerial office of Marlene Kairouz
- Somyurek factional operatives were accessing a database containing the personal information of Victorians.
14 Oct 2021
- Witness Adam Sullivan (2019 former electoral officer)
- details of Mr Somyurek’s electorate office as dysfunctional, run down, pressure on staff to do factional work, with details of office rorting
18 Oct 2021 (As it happened – by Mathew Dunckley & Sumyya Ilanbey)
- Witness Banyule Mayor, Rick Garotti
- Garotti asked Adem Somyurek to seek answers from minister over Somali association grant
- Bid to ‘reward’ daughter of a factional figure with electorate office role
- Garotti tells hearing ‘a lot of factional activity’ relies on public funding
- Mayor claims Elasmar ‘involved’ in branch stacking
- Filling in ballots at electorate office was standard practice: Garotti
- Mayor spent $15,000 on branch stacking
- Warehousing of members to enable factional branch takeovers
- Emails not used for factional messages
19 Oct 2021 (As it happened – by Tammy Mills and Sumeyya Ilanbey)
- Somali Australia Council of Victoria accused of taking $100,000 in taxpayer funds.
- SACOV founder Hussein Haraco accused of keeping most of a $75,000 community grant
- Adem Somyurek and Rick Garotti had accused journalists of racism to prevent exposure
- Ministerial adviser accused of agreeing to ‘manipulate’ grant process
- Allegations against senior Upper House member
- The Opposition calls for audit of Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation grants
- Pursuit of power: Banyule council mayor finishes evidence
1 Nov 2021
Victorian MP’s husband paid taxpayer-funded salary for factional work, Ibac hears – by Nino Bucci, The Guardian, 1 Nov 2021
3 Nov 2021 (As it happened – by Tammy Mills and Sumeyya Ilanbey )
- Electorate officer tells inquiry she was involved in branch stacking
- Kairouz transferred $14,000 for ‘membership renewal season’
- ‘Did I help fill out ballots? Yes’, Kairouz staffer tells inquiry
- Between $15,000 and $18,000 spent on Labor memberships, inquiry told
- ‘A bit like signing a blank cheque’
- Tearful staffer agrees conduct was ‘seriously wrong’
- Kairouz electorate officer says signatures weren’t forged
- ‘Systematic’ forgery of signatures, renewal of memberships
- MP Marlene Kairouz evidence to be given in secret, after inquiry alleges she paid for $60,000 in ALP memberships
7-9 Nov 2021 Witness Adem Somyurek
- ‘Lost all perspective’: Somyurek concedes he should be condemned – by Sumeyya Ilanbey, The Age 9 Nov 2021
- ‘It’s wrong’: Adem Somyurek tells Ibac he ‘lost all perspective’ in factional battle – by Nino Bucci, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2021
- ‘I’ve no idea what you’re saying’: Somyurek’s tortured day at IBAC – by Noel Towell, The Age, 9 Nov 2021
- Victorian MP employed ‘factional operatives’ for taxpayer-funded political work, Ibac hears – by Nino Bucci, The Guardian, 8 Nov 2021
- Former Victorian Labor minister Adem Somyurek tells IBAC the Premier ignored red-shirts rort warning – by Bridget Rollason, ABC News, 8 Nov 2021
- Somyurek’s facade crumbles as probe scrutiny intensifies – by Sumeyya Ilanbey & Paul Sakkal, The Age, 12 Nov 2021
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