By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Former ALP powerbroker Adem Somyurek says he and Premier Daniel Andrews initiated a 2002 peace deal to end the party’s branch-stacking war in the south east.
Mr Andrews and Mr Somyurek discussed ending the “toxic” war between their rival factions Left and Right respectively, Mr Somyurek told an IBAC inquiry Operation Watts on 8 November.
The genesis of the accord was that the pair “wanted to go into Parliament and pursue our career”.
It was to stop a repeat of “really bad things” happening in the preselection battle for the safe federal seat of Holt in 1998.
At the time, council and government “largesse” was used to win votes and “key people” over to each side.
“People would have ended up in jail had that culture persisted,” Mr Somyurek said.
He claimed Mr Andrews was “organising” the Left to get control of Holt.
Leading the Right’s effort was confessed branch-stacker Anthony Byrne, who employed Mr Somyurek as an electorate officer at the time.
Mr Byrne, who ultimately won preselection, was “leading the charge … basically invading or raiding the Left branch”, Mr Somyurek said.
Mr Somyurek recalled “raiding” Left branch meetings, such as walking with a “whole bunch of Albanians” to then-Dandenong MP John Pandazopoulos’s office.
About 80 “Bosnians” turned up to a Left branch at Noble Park Community Centre.
“The Left followed suit at the Albanian soccer club where they had lined up all their Sri Lankans, about 100 of them lined up, before the Albanians were able to become members.
“Raiding of the branches in particular was very toxic, tempers were frayed, and it got nasty.”
The Left and the Right were divided along ethnic lines, Mr Somyurek said.
According to him, former faction overlord Stephen Conroy adopted “conservative”, “anti-Communist” communities to the Right – Turkish, Bosnian, Albanian, Vietnamese and Cambodian communities.
The Left specialised in “ethnic minorities within nation states who had a grievance“ – the Balkan Muslim, Balkan Christian, Serbs, Greeks, Kurds, Alawite Turks, Sri Lankan Tamils and Burghers.
Mr Andrews and Mr Somyurek’s factional bosses Alan Griffin (Left) and Mr Byrne (Right) “ticked off” on the 2002 peace deal, he said.
Before the accord, there were more than 1000 members in Holt.
It dropped to 200 by 2019.
The south-east had become a “model of interfactional cooperation” with “no branch stacking” for 17 years, Mr Somyurek said.
None of his electorate office staff were “recruiting (members) for me”, though they could “potentially recruit”.
“I don’t have a problem with them doing factional work from my office… But that’s got to have limits.
“I would insist that they turn up for work.”
Mr Somyurek admitted to a scheme where MPs paid for numerous others’ renewed memberships – in breach of party rules.
When Mr Somyurek became an MP, he was asked by Mr Byrne to contribute. He estimated paying $2000 a year but didn’t know what happened to the money.
“That’s Byrne’s operation.
“Even after my factional sort of star rose, Byrne was still in charge of the South East. He was still the boss.”
He claimed Mr Byrne was going to a “Vietnamese gentlemen” for $7000 for renewals.
“I’m not sure what he promised him, but I’m sure he got it under false pretences.
“I recall him trying to beg, borrow and steal to pay memberships.”
The deal collapsed after the Left “unilaterally” broke it in late 2019, Mr Somyurek said.
He hadn’t been interested in messages of the Left “running amok” until 24 December when learning of about 350 new recruits, he told the inquiry.
In Mr Byrne’s texts in late 2019, which were earlier tabled at IBAC, he described Mr Somyurek as a “vandal” trying to “ramp up branch stacking in the south east”.
At the time he believed Mr Somyurek was seeking to replace sitting Labor rival-faction MPs Gabrielle Williams (Dandenong) and Pauline Richards (Cranbourne) with Moderate Labor members.
The party was being taken over by Mr Somyurek “whose sole objective was power and power alone,” Mr Byrne told IBAC on 11 October.
“I had really hoped when Adem had become a Minister in 2018 that he would stop the factional activity.
“The branch stacking wasn’t stopping … it actually started accelerating, and then started coming towards the South East.
“As Adem was getting more and more power, it was almost becoming an existential threat for the Labor Party.”
