Inside axed Minister Adem Somyurek’s rise from cabbie to Labor powerbroker
Adem Somyurek’s rise from taxi driver to Minister of the Crown should have been the stuff of Labor legend. Instead, it’s now transpired into a political car crash. Here’s the full story.
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Adem Somyurek’s rise from taxi driver to Minister of the Crown should have been the stuff of Labor legend. At 9am on Monday, when he walked into Premier Daniel Andrews’ office, it turned into a car crash.
Somyurek has had more than his fair share of bingles. But no amount of insurance — banked in his extraordinary influence over the Labor Party’s Victorian branch — could stop his political career becoming a write-off.
He received his marching orders at 1 Treasury Place, a long way from the first 18 months of his life in the Turkish city of Izmir, the scene of repeated battles for power throughout history.
Somyurek’s family migrated to Australia in 1969, and as a child, he spent hours waiting for them to finish work in factories. Driving home to their housing commission flat, Somyurek’s parents made it clear their son’s life in Australia could be different.
“My parents would always tell me to … never end up like them. That is, entrapped and without a choice,” Somyurek said in his inaugural speech in parliament in 2003.
After driving a taxi as a young man, Somyurek’s choice was to pursue his own kind of power, entering the political fray as a staffer for Labor senator Jacinta Collins and lower house MP Anthony Byrne.
Byrne, the member for Holt, played a crucial role in Somyurek’s preselection shortly after the 9/11 terror attack.
“A body of opinion within the party was reluctant to preselect a candidate of Muslim origin,” Somyurek said at the time. But Byrne backed him to the hilt, and Somyurek said “without him, I would not have realised this dream”.
Somyurek’s rise was backed by the powerful Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, a socially conservative union. As an upper house MP, he also developed a reputation for wheeling and dealing in local Labor branches, creating a power base of members particularly tied to ethnic communities.
Somyurek didn’t make it into the ministry in the Bracks-Brumby years — in 2009, he lost his role as a parliamentary committee chair after he was given a suspended jail sentence for driving while unlicensed.
But by 2014, when Andrews led Labor to a historic election victory, Somyurek’s factional power helped him move into Cabinet as the minister for small business, innovation and trade.
That ended in tears in the middle of 2015. Dimity Paul, Somyurek’s chief of staff, alleged he gently shook her chin and subjected her to “a pattern of abusive and inappropriate behaviour”.
Andrews called in former Office of Police Integrity boss Michael Strong, whose report forced Somyurek to resign.
He has always denied the allegations. Instead, Somyurek blamed his demise on the breakdown of his relationship with the SDA. He accused union boss Michael Donovan — who combined with Byrne to help him become an MP — of orchestrating the “payback”.
When Somyurek returned to the backbench, he sought his own revenge.
Labor figures marvel at how he united the party’s Right, bringing together the Transport Workers’ Union and the National Union of Workers, and even mending fences with the SDA in an effort to achieve internal supremacy.
But the Cons — controlled by former senator Stephen Conroy — wouldn’t join. It was a sore point that exploded in early 2018, when Somyurek brandished a butter knife in a confrontation with minister John Eren in the parliamentary members’ dining room.
Eren told friends Somyurek said in Turkish: “I’m going to f*** you.” In the aftermath, Somyurek’s enemies leaked furious text messages he sent to Eren about rival powerbroker and federal MP Richard Marles.
“I’m going to f*** that Marles. I better not see that ****,” he said.
Somyurek’s allies saw it as another attempt to kill him off. Again, it only made him stronger.
Around the same time, Labor’s Socialist Left — the Premier’s own faction — was rocked by the departure of powerful unions including the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union.
They formed the Industrial Left and aligned themselves with Somyurek’s forces on the Right.
By the 2018 election, this gave Somyurek essential control of the numbers in Andrews’ caucus, and in the broader Victorian party. It meant the Premier had to put him back into Cabinet. Through gritted teeth, he said Somyurek was “a better man than he has ever been”.
Somyurek’s backing of Clare Burns made her the party’s state secretary, extending his influence into Labor headquarters.
The recordings obtained by 60 Minutes showed none of this was enough. Somyurek allegedly stacked more Labor members into branches he wanted to control so he could knock off rivals.
“I’ll be just running the joint,” he boasted. “It’s who I say is going to be the f***ing premier.”
It was arrogant but many in Labor believed it was the truth. That was until Monday, when Andrews ran Somyurek out of town. His life in the Labor Party is over. The only question now is whether that also ends his power.
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