Operation Watts reached a fork in the factional road several times.
And on each occasion, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission failed to break left and simply stormed further to the right in its withering public inquiry into branch stacking in the Victorian ALP.
In doing so, Operation Watts obliterated the Right-wing bloc Labor’s factional warlord Adem Somyurek had pulled together to control the Victorian ALP, both at a federal and state level.
Three Labor ministers aligned with Somyurek not only lost their ministries but have all since left parliament.
Their years of loyal service to both Labor and their boss, Premier Daniel Andrews, counted for absolutely nothing.
Operation Watts — which ultimately did not lead to any criminal charges against anyone — didn’t just destroy Labor’s Right, it effectively handed eventual control of the ALP to the Socialist Left.
The SL, of course, just happens to be the faction Daniel Andrews calls home. Another senior member of the SL is Lily D’Ambrosio.
When Operation Watts reached the factional fork during its hearings in 2021, there were plenty of Labor types shouting at their Covid-induced livestreams, imploring IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich to branch Left as well.
But for reasons never sufficiently explained, Operation Watts failed to take the opportunity and stuck to what appeared to be its predetermined direction to the Right.
Those who understood Labor politics were aghast.
They knew it wasn’t just the Victorian ALP’s Right-wing that engaged in mass recruitment of suburban members to deliver control of branches and ultimately control of the parliamentary party.
The Left fork, they knew, was littered with evidence of systemic branch stacking. All IBAC needed to do was put the Socialist Left leaders in the stand, under oath, and grill them about their own histories of branch stacking. But it never happened.
Fast-forward more than two years, and now it’s the Socialist Left confronting a scandal over branch stacking, one that was always there waiting to be uncovered.
On Tuesday, The Australian revealed that a Labor branch associated with Ms D’Ambrosio forged the signatures of at least two dead people multiple times on party membership forms. Other members of the Lalor South branch have told The Australian that they can’t recall paying for their annual memberships. This sounds a lot like branch stacking.
But curiously the Premier now seems content to say “sorry”, and stand by his minister.
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