The rise of Labor warrior Kos Samaras
In just a few short years, Kos Samaras has gone from Labor ‘faceless man’ to Melbourne’s most influential political strategist. And he’s done it without the backing of Daniel Andrews.
Better call Kos!
When it comes to getting your way in Melbourne, it seems one mobile is dialled more than most. It belongs to a bloke called Kosmos Samaras.
Got a problem that needs fixing? Need to sell a tough message? Want to find out what the masses are thinking? Need to convince a minister of your position? Then Samaras and his firm, RedBridge Group, offer answers. For a price, of course.
Corporations, a billion-dollar pub group, property developers, construction giants, funeral homes, financial services firms, medical researchers, advertising firms, private schools, financial services, medical researchers, the automotive industry, the seafood industry and councils turn to him.
Samaras’s rise has been rapid. RedBridge was listed on the Victorian Lobbyist Register on September 30, 2019. Within months, he had transformed from Victorian ALP machine man into one of the most influential political and corporate fixers in a city overloaded with ex-political types who think they are fixers.
Three and a bit years on, RedBridge lists 51 clients on the register including the Bruce Mathieson Group, Bacchus Marsh Grammar, Banco Group, MAB Corporation, Oliver Hume Property Funds, Newhaven Group and the Stamoulis Property Group. Another 10 firms are listed as former clients.
The big end of town pays well. Those with an understanding of the business of lobbying reckon RedBridge would be pocketing tens of thousands of dollars a month from each of the bigger clients. There are other clients, too, such as the City of Melbourne, which employs RedBridge as a research and political strategy consultant, and therefore doesn’t need to be listed on the register.
The council has paid RedBridge $77,000 since January 2021 for its services. It’s not a huge earner for Samaras but it appeals to his ongoing passion for politics.
One suburban council paid RedBridge $30,000 for help over a contentious plan to erect high-rise power lines through its suburbs.
“Kos has been an innovator, a radical and a revolutionary in a crowded industry that was used to doing the same thing the same way,” observes one aficionado of how politics and business cohabitate in Melbourne.
“He’s set a land speed record in a competitive industry, and he’s been able to do that because his methods are better and he’s smarter than his competitors.
“He offers data-driven answers and incredibly accurate market research to clients. Then it essentially becomes a case of ‘we’re not here to lobby, we’re here to tell you what the people think’.
“Don’t forget, data is like catnip for politicians. Kos knows this.”
The 52-year-old doesn’t just know it. He trades off it.
“Kos specialises in combining research, analysis and marketing to maximise influence within the broader community, while utilising the best persuasion tools applicable to any given project and campaign,” RedBridge’s website says of its founder, trumpeting a lofty philosophy of “influence with integrity”. “Twenty-five years of political experience has also enabled him to develop an extensive knowledge on how governments and political parties function and what drives them.”
Samaras learnt how to make politics in the ruthless world of the Victorian ALP, where between 2005 and 2019 he served as the party’s deputy campaign director. He was a senior strategist in four state elections and four federal elections.
Samaras credits his mother, Maria Fiokanios, with starting the political fire in him as a boy growing up in a housing commission home in Meadow Heights. As a young woman in Greece she had joined the Communist Party and civil war was erupting. Her father, a communist partisan who spent time in prison for his beliefs, wanted her to get out. So she came to Melbourne in 1966.
There she worked in a rope factory and married Samaras’s father, Spiros Lasikaratos, who worked in a smelter. They were tough jobs. The couple split when Samaras was only three. (Next month, Samaras is travelling to Greece to see his 85-year-old dad for the first time since then.)
“I was fairly politically aware because of my mum. She was active when she was young in Greece, she paid a price for that,” he tells Inquirer.
“So I was alert to politics pretty young and always interested in politics as far back as I can remember. I was handing out how-to-vote cards for the Labor Party in my teens.”
After school, Samaras worked in advertising for a few years and became active in Labor at the age of 25. “My pop, (his mother’s) dad, when he came over, knew I was interested in politics and would go: ‘Just be aware how lucky you are to be in this country because you get to express it and it’s fine. When I was your age I was shot at,’ ” he says.
As Samaras’s lobbying and research business has blossomed, his celebrity, along with that of his RedBridge partner and former Liberal adviser Tony Barry, has grown, as the duo have become straight-talking stars on election night television panels.
But for all of his business success, it’s clear Samaras has never really left politics behind. Much to the bewilderment of some in Labor and even his friends, Samaras has continued to be active in the factional world of the ALP.
“The fact that Kos still thinks he can be a faceless man free to get involved in preselections and attend factional meetings deciding who gets which seat takes my breath away,” one Labor veteran said. “He should not be anywhere near this type of stuff. It exposes him and his business.”
Attending that meeting at the Transport Workers Union office in Port Melbourne left him facing accusations of a conflict of interest. How is it ethical for a registered political lobbyist to be involved in preselecting future Labor MPs he may be lobbying later on behalf of private clients? He never really answered that question.
Samaras, a former assistant state secretary of the Victorian ALP, when questioned at the time by The Australian, played down his involvement in the factional deal, saying he was attending only as a proxy for then Labor senator Kim Carr.
“I am a registered lobbyist, that’s legal and proper,” Samaras said after the meeting.
“I have an affiliation with a political party. I have an interest in the types of people that are representing the community that I have grown up in … so I am present and active in this space.”
Samaras said this of the lobbyists (two other attendees, Mat Hilakari and Alan Griffin, were also registered lobbyists) involved in that factional deal: “Do we have the final say on what happens? Not really. Part of the process? Absolutely.”
Potential conflicts of interest are minefields that Samaras is used to picking his way through. One of the biggest – certainly the most personal – surrounds his marriage to the Andrews government Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Community Sport and Suburban Development, Ros Spence. Previously, she was also minister for multicultural affairs.
“Special arrangements are in place to ensure there’s no conflict and I’m fully aware and protective of the welfare of my wife’s career,” Samaras tells Inquirer. “Any mistake in that space cannot be tolerated. Therefore we have to show utmost caution.”
Those embedded in the world of Victorian Labor note that one remarkable aspect of Samaras’s success has been his ability to establish a thriving political business without the patronage of the most powerful politician in Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews.
Far from being an asset, Labor figures note that Samaras’s history with the Premier proved to be hurdle as they saw his office frustrate – some go as far as describing it as obstruction – RedBridge’s emergence.
Both Samaras and Andrews cut their teeth in the Socialist Left but they’ve never been friends. Some describe it as a “love-hate” relationship. Others say it is more akin to a “respect-and-dislike” dynamic.
This complicated relationship became even more complicated last year when Labor figures say the Premier took offence to Samaras providing election commentary and polling for the Herald Sun and 3AW’s Neil Mitchell. Andrews perceives both outlets as hostile and has boycotted Mitchell for several years.
But there was Samaras – the architect of the Premier’s 2018 Dan-slide election victory and Labor warrior – appearing in both outlets. “That pissed him off,” one party veteran said.
Samaras made it clear to those in the party that he felt free to engage with both outlets as he was no longer a party official and considered it important to provide objective analysis.
Asked this week about his relationship with the Premier, Samaras laughs wryly – for about five seconds.
“I have said hello when we have crossed paths, but we have never been close,” he tells Inquirer. “We had a lot of mutual respect, and I still consider him one of the most formidable politicians in the country, but we don’t really talk all that much. We haven’t spoken at length since I left the party.”
Alliances and even friendships often fall victim to politics. Samaras and Andrews shared neither as they grew up in the Socialist Left cauldron in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The mere fact they were in the SL was never enough to overcome their personality differences. Plus the other critical thing to remember is while both shared a faction, they were in rival camps. It is the Victorian Labor Party, after all. With Samaras a creature of the northwest and Andrews the southeast, there was a touch of the Hatfield-McCoy feud about their early dynamic.
“When we both got active he was a gunslinger from the southeast and I was one from the northwest. He was doing the work for Alan Griffin and I was doing the work for Kim Carr,” Samaras says.
“Both of us were charged with trying to help the two men become ministers. And they both worked out at the time the quickest way was not to stack branches but win marginal seats.
“Hence both Daniel and I went into an arms race as to who can run the best marginal seat campaign.”
No one survives in politics without wearing some scars. For all of his recent success, Samaras is no exception. In 2014, despite their fraught relationship, Samaras acted as the fall guy for the “dictaphone” scandal threatening Andrews’ leadership just months before the state election (which he would go on to win).
Months earlier, at a Labor Party state conference, Samaras admits that he came into possession of a misplaced dictaphone belonging to a reporter from The Age, which was in lost-and-found.
On that device was an interview with former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu, which was highly critical of members of the Liberal Party. A copy of the interview leaked and all hell broke loose.
Police were called in to investigate if the dictaphone was stolen and Andrews was wearing serious heat over the actions of his staff who had listened to The Age’s dictaphone. Andrews denied that he had personally listened to the recording. A scalp was needed. And Samaras took sole responsibility for the mess, issuing a lengthy public statement and apology.
One Labor insider recalled this as a dark period for Samaras. “(Kos) took the bullet, mate. Big time. They forced him to take the bullet,” the figure said. “It traumatised him for years.”
