Aide tells of Somyurek ‘megalomania’, office ‘dysfunction’

Adem Somyurek was a “megalomaniac”, according to his former staffer, with his inner circle privately referring to the ex-Labor minister as “Mein Fuehrer” and describing meetings of his faction as the “Fourth Reich”.

Adam Sullivan told the third day of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s public hearings into Labor Party branch stacking in Victoria that Mr Somyurek’s electorate office was “dysfunctional”, “decrepit, run down [and] filled with cobwebs”.

Former electorate office staffer Adam Sullivan gave evidence on the third day of the public IBAC hearing.

Mr Somyurek’s father invoiced taxpayers for cleaning contracts he did not perform, the hearings were told.

“Contrary to media reports of Moderate Labor bestriding the globe like a colossus, it was actually a house of straw held together by crazy glue and sticky tape,” Mr Sullivan told IBAC.

Some employees of Mr Somyurek collected wages without appearing at work regularly, and the electorate office in early 2018 “misappropriated” up to $14,000 from its budget to support the election campaign of Mordialloc MP Tim Richardson, Mr Sullivan said.

Mr Somyurek’s staffer also worked for federal MP Anthony Byrne, former Andrews government minister Marlene Kairouz and upper house MP Tien Kieu.

At the height of branch-stacking operations in the lead-up to the 2018 national ALP conference, while working for Ms Kairouz, Mr Sullivan told IBAC he would spend all of his taxpayer-funded days working on factional activities, with the minister in the same office observing him filling out ALP ballot forms.

Mr Sullivan told the hearing there was implicit pressure on staff to do factional work because those who refused to do so would be deemed “useless” and “cast aside”, and it was possible their MP would not be elected, meaning they would lose their job. He characterised their choice as a “morally and ethically bankrupt calculation”.

Mr Sullivan gave evidence on the third day of IBAC’s investigation, which has already prompted the resignation of state minister Luke Donnellan.

On Monday, counsel assisting the commission Chris Carr said the IBAC hearing was probing “premeditated systemic rorting of taxpayer resources”. The Age and 60 Minutes revealed the industrial-scale branch stacking operation last year.

“You can draft the best constitution that was ever seen, you can tinker with all the mechanisms you like, at the end of the day, somewhere along the line, someone has to make a decision to either do the right thing or do the wrong thing,” Mr Sullivan told IBAC on Wednesday.

“As you will see from my testimony, the testimonies of people before me, the testimonies of people who come after me, 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.”

The 2018 Ombudsman’s report into the “red shirts” scandal did not deter Labor MPs or staffers from misusing taxpayer funds for factional activities, Mr Sullivan said, because there were “so many skeletons in the closet” and anyone who blew the whistle would guarantee “mutually assured destruction”.

IBAC heard Mr Somyurek’s father was paid for cleaning his son’s electorate office even though he hadn’t, and former MP Mr Byrne and aspiring politician Steve Michelson gave “wads of cash in envelopes” for the “kitty”, which was used to pay for membership to control branches and secure positions in Parliament for allies.

Mr Carr asked Mr Sullivan if he was involved in “a quite deliberate course of conduct to misappropriate the electoral office budget in Mr Somyurek’s office”.

“Yes, I was,” the former staffer replied. “I believe you would be referring to the purchase of stamps by Mr Somyurek’s budget.”

He estimated that he personally bought between $11,000 and $14,000 worth of stamps in 2018 using Mr Somyurek’s electorate office budget, and “a fair number of them” were used to help Mr Richardson’s campaign for re-election that year.

Mr Richardson released a statement on Wednesday evening saying he had not been involved in branch stacking nor had he paid for any memberships, but he did not address the substance of the allegations raised at IBAC on Wednesday afternoon.

IBAC has heard evidence about how state MP Adem Somyurek’s office was run. Credit: Jason South

“I have always complied with the requirements of my electorate office communications budget,” he said, adding that his focus had always been “working as hard as I can for the wonderful Mordialloc consituents”.

“I will not be making any further comment on an active inquiries [sic].”

Mr Sullivan spoke of a culture in which he felt “apprehensive” about telling Mr Somyurek, his “defacto boss”, he would be resigning from Mr Kieu’s electorate office in January 2020 and leaving politics.

Mr Carr revealed in the hearings that in private text messages Mr Sullivan referred to Mr Somyurek as “Mein Fuehrer”.

Daniel Andrews campaigning in 2014 with Labor Mordialloc candidate Tim Richardson.Credit: Penny Stephens

“That’s a particularly evocative term ordinarily; if it’s deployed, it’s deployed to indicate some sort of dictator,” Mr Carr said.

Mr Sullivan responded: “Those were obviously private text messages; I wouldn’t refer to Mr Somyurek or anyone in those terms ... It occurred to all of us, I even recall Anthony referring to one of the Moderate Labor meetings as the meeting of the Fourth Reich.

“By January 2020, Mr Somyurek accumulated quite an amount of power and influence over the party. He could be an overbearing person at times ... and of course anyone who tends to have that much power tends to become a megalomaniac.”

On Tuesday, IBAC Commissioner Robert Redlich noted that, despite a 1998 internal Labor Party review aimed at ending branch stacking and a 2018 Ombudsman investigation into the “red shirts rort”, it did not seem there was “sufficient will” to clean up some of the party’s cultural problems.

In 2018, Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass found Labor misused $388,000 of public money by deploying electorate staff to do campaign duties in safe seats before the 2014 election.

Mr Sullivan said the scrutiny did little to deter Labor MPs or staffers misusing taxpayer funds for factional duties.

“No one would be stupid enough to engage in that exact same scenario [behaviour] going forward,” Mr Sullivan said.

“However, when the Ombudsman closes one window, another door still remains open. There are other avenues to exploit, for a lack of a better word. You wouldn’t be engaging in the exact same sort of behaviour; in that instance it wasn’t viewed as too big of an issue.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.Credit: Scott McNaughton

This week, Mr Redlich has said the commission might examine party activities from the late 1990s when Mr Byrne and Mr Somyurek were pitched in a factional battle against Daniel Andrews, now state Premier, and the Socialist Left faction to which he was aligned.

The period was known for heavy branch stacking, which was not prohibited by party rules at that time.

Three party sources involved at the time confirmed to The Age that Mr Andrews was a key lieutenant of left-wing factional head Alan Griffin. Their grouping battled Mr Byrne in the 1999 preselection for the seat of Holt, which Mr Byrne won.

Mr Andrews has consistently said he never broke party rules.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, Mr Andrews declined to say whether IBAC had spoken to him about the Operation Watts investigation, saying it would be “deeply inappropriate” to discuss his recruitment activities in the 1990s.

“I won’t be providing you with a commentary on matters that are absolutely being deliberated on, being discussed. Evidence is being led, claims are being made,” he said.

“Those issues, that period of time if you like, are being canvassed, and are part of an IBAC process. I’m not going to try and do their job for them or cut across the work they’re doing.”

Mr Sullivan said at one stage he was one of five employees in Mr Somyurek’s electorate office, although there wasn’t much work for them, or much foot traffic.

Employee records obtained by IBAC showed staffer Pinar Yesil was employed in the office as a casual for six weeks full-time, but Mr Sullivan said she rarely turned up to the office.

“It could have been a situation where she would come in for a number of hours on maybe one or two days out of that week, or she will be coming in for maybe four days a week but an hour or two here and there,” Mr Sullivan said.

When asked what work she was doing, Mr Sullivan said: “Nothing that would approach typical electorate office work. She was logged into the computer, as to exactly what she was doing, I can’t say.”

Mr Sullivan also told IBAC Mr Michelson paid about $5000 for Labor Party membership renewals. Mr Michelson, was once an adviser to former federal Labor leader Bill Shorten, but quit in 2017 over a blackface costume controversy.

His name was raised during evidence on Tuesday, when Mr Somyurek’s lawyer cross-examined Mr Byrne, reading him a series of foul-mouthed text messages it was alleged Mr Byrne had sent to Mr Somyurek in 2019.

Mr Sullivan said Mr Michelson handed him between $4000 and $5000 in cash for the “kitty” to be used to pay for other people’s membership or renewals.

Mr Sullivan said Mr Somyurek gave him $2000 and Mr Byrne about $7000. On Monday, Mr Byrne testified he, Mr Somyurek and Mr Michelson had made contributions to the “kitty”. Mr Michelson denied the allegations.

While branch-stacking is in breach of Labor Party rules, it is not illegal and would not normally be subject to an IBAC investigation. The commission is exploring whether public funds were used for factional purposes.

The public hearings will run for five weeks. IBAC has not yet released next week’s witness list.

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