Thread by @Voice4Victoria

We're back for day 3 of IBAC.
Expecting that if cross examination was approved (🤞) Schreiber is back first up for questions from Somyurek's counsel, then we have another ex-staffer who's been repeatedly named already, Adam Sullivan. Watch live here:
ibac.vic.gov.au/investigating-…

Based on Somyurek's tweets, the cross examination of Schreiber at this time has been denied. We're straight into Adam today.

Currently running through/ establishing Adam's background in politics and how he ended up as an electoral officer in Byrne's office.

Carr kicks off asking if Sullivan witnessed what Byrne said was occurring in his offices. Lists the ballots, funds, etc.
Sullivan says he witnessed that, going into detail on where & who funds came from, including Somyurek & Michaelson.
"Wads of cash" being dropped in.

Carr "were you engaged in a deliberate course of conduct to misappropriate the electoral budget in Mr Somyurek's office".
Sullivan "yes".

Oh. Tim Richardson put squarely in the middle of this again. 👀

Clarifying that electoral budget is not meant to be used for party purposes at all.

Sullivan estimates that the amount of budget misappropriated by 'buying stamps' within the office was in the region of 11-14k. Not exactly chump change on stationery.

Sullivan said he was initially hesitant to accept job at Somyurek's office, cites: bad press, some rumours on his personality & the fact his office had a reputation for being 'dysfunctional'.
Wasn't sure what he was being sent there to do, if he was meant to fix it up.

Says he almost felt like he was being set up to fail as he believed Somyurek didn't really want his office to made functional.

Sullivan kicks off a response to "what does a functional electorate office look like to you" with "you'd expect the MP would be there or even if they're a Minister there's a senior staffer there most days".
Talk about a bar being on the floor. Be interested in an MP audit on this

Says Merlino, Richardson, all had 'functional offices' set up.

Carr asks the obvious, why did Sullivan take the job with Somyurek. He says that there's a culture that you don't really turn down offers from those higher up the hierarchy. If you do 'your use value declines & useless people have a way of disappearing'. Yikes.

Sullivan admits that at that point he also held potential personal political aspirations in the party and this also affected his decision to be agreeable and accept the role.

OH. Tien is back in this, Sullivan also worked there up to 2020. Wow this is quite the employment list between Labor offices.

Second blip today where the hearing briefly cuts out for public viewing. While eventually this will come out, this is the reason for the half hour livestream delay, so if needed certain info isn't made public that might compromise the investigation while it's still happening.

Carr "There was no reason then for so many people to be working at Somyurek's office?" lol

Ohhh. We're onto questions on what community organisations may have been "useful for factional opportunities".

Pinar Yesil now the topic. She was a previous employee in Somyurek's office that then got elected to Dande council (also coming up again..), which had some scandal attached that she didn't turn up to meetings. Sullivan claims little to do with her, thought she was overseas.

Now discussing the physical clean up of Somyurek's office. Sullivan saying there were cobwebs etc.
Commissioner questions relevance of these Qs. Carr is pushing that there was no cleaning & Sullivan did it himself.
Wonder where this is going? Maybe 'cleaning out' the wrong thing?

Carr "I just want to focus on the lack of cleanliness for a moment". Hmm..
Asks if there were nights Sullivan worked late. He says yes, especially when first started he was there until 7pm-ish.

Carr "so you never saw anyone cleaning other than bin liners".
Where is this going..

In 9 months Sullivan claims he only saw Somyurek in the electorate office during business hours once. Yikes.

*15min delay on tweets. One of those days.

Sullivan claims prior to working for Byrne he didn't engage in any branch stacking work in offices.

Red shirts discussions are back 👀

In short, red shirts was a previous ombudsman investigation into ALP misuse of funds during an election period, of roughly 388k. Dan said the misuse 'was not deliberate', and the amount was repaid by the party.

Current dissection into what happened with red shirts and the overlapping misuse of public funds is obviously very relevant. Labor won't be happy having this dragged up and linked.

Sullivan claiming original redshirts whistleblower was new to Labor, so had less to lose. That those established in the party all had "skeletons in the closet", so there was "mutually assured destruction" within the party that avoided staff becoming whistleblowers. Yikes.

The level of toxic culture getting described is pretty full on.
"If you weren't willing to do things you'd be useless essentially and cast aside".

Commissioner "was it known within the party were there irregularities".
Sullivan says it was widely known.

Clearly this kind of issue is NOT limited to certain sub-factions.

MAC & Admin committee (core of ALP memberships) coming up again. Sullivan was a member of MAC, which happened after he used to sub for McClennen (spelling?)

Fully expect McClennen will be another witness in the near future. He's been a central during a lot of testimony so far.

Commissioner asks Sullivan if he followed Schreiber's testimony regarding checking member applications. Says yes.

Asks if "the other factions engaged in similar activities". Says he thinks maybe but unsure if they used Campaign software to do so. Interesting. Very vague.

Irony. Carr asks that one of the reasons for MAC to exist is to ensure memberships are genuine & not the result of branch stacking.
Sullivan kind of says it's about checking info.
Carr still makes the point it still exists to check if it's a genuine application for membership.

Wow. Carr digging into realistic attendee/quorum numbers for ALP branch meetings, says most don't meet quorum so how can ppl believe many want to join.
Sullivan "I wish we lived in a world where the Labor party had that many aspiring applicants".

Still clearly a party fan.

Carr makes the point then that "anyone seeing 5 or 6, let alone 50 applications is going to believe there may be stacking happening".
Sullivan says "it depends on the intelligence going into MAC"

ERRR.

Carr summarises that "anyone who sat on MAC for at least a few months though would be aware of this occurring".
Sullivan is slower to reply but says this is a fair assessment.

Just dumps any ALP MAC member into knowledge about branch stacking occuring.

Sullivan can't even recall which branch he was previously secretary of..
Admits he was factionalised.
When asked by Carr he says it's common this happens with secretaries.
(If the branch itself is factionalised this isn't exactly groundbreaking).

Carr asks if branch secs were also often staffers.
Sullivan says yes. Wow.
Confirmed that they're all also factionalised.

Commissioner asks how much of MAC was comprised of electoral officers.
Sullivan says first off, 99% of committee is factionalised, but it would be 60-75% who were electoral staff.

Commissioner points out that means 60-75% of the committee weren't meant to be in that role.

Sullivan has agreed with this.

This is insane.
The backbone of the Labor memberships sub-committee, MAC, is TOTALLY inappropriately structured.

Yeah so Sullivan basically just said if they didn't branch stack they wouldn't get into parliament or stay there.

We haven't even finished day three.

Well, we're back with a bang.
Sullivan says factional interests in the party came above that of the Victorian public.

Sullivan said it was Adem Somyurek who suggested he go work for Kieu.

Carr asked if he sent a resume to anyone to do that. Says yes, he sent it to Ceasar Melham.

Carr trying to work out how the factional links in this and how or why Melham is getting applications for employment in other MPs office, which so far is because he was a 'faction head'.

Commissioner "bizarre isn't it that electoral officers aren't meant to undertake factional work but these appointments are getting decided by the factional heads".

Bizarre is putting it mildly.

IBAC cracking out the metadata on documents that Sullivan created that are time stamped during business hours, that are certainly not electoral work.
Sullivan says he sometimes did things like that on his own choice for something to do in the office.

Yeah none of that is good 😂

We're back into the evidence that came up with Byrne where there were supposedly txt exchanges between himself & Somyurek about Sullivan being lent back to Byrne's office in order to fill out the ballot papers.

Yeah, wow.
Sullivan saying "it is just easier" to have taken ballots off members, which they also do in Young Labor, in case they 'fill them out wrong'. This way they could control it & it was easier.
Process violation smashcut with the equivalent of helicopter parenting.

Incredible how much of this hearing has just been trying to work out where Sullivan was meant to be employed at what point in time, who else worked there and the lists of different inappropriate tasks at the various places.

He's so casual about the volume and length of time for what he was engaged in. Between that and MAC % being 60-70% inappropriately staffed you truly have to wonder how many current employees are just like Sullivan.

Oh boy. Carr "is it fair if people are turning up with 'wads of ballot papers', then head office must be aware to what's going on"
Sullivan "yes"
Commissioner wants to confirm that 'head office' is the Labor offices in the docklands.

Carr "were the people who worked in head office at that time factional appts"
AS "Yes"
Carr "does this explain why they'd turn a blind eye to ballot harvesting"
AS "yes it would".

My god Labor are in some 💩 here.

Sullivan "head office is just an extension of the faction system that exists in the ALP. The factions also only really exist because of branch stacking".

This is just explosive.

Labor right now:

Interesting. Commissioner asks if re-issue of ballot papers was in order to have someone else vote. Sullivan says no it was due to errors on the paper, which was very common. Had no knowledge of anything else occurring. Says papers are reissued directly to same registered address

**this ballot is for votes within Labor by members. Public election ballots certainly do not get given to political party HQs**

Oop. Carr is asking if 'shortcuts' got taken for finalising reissued ballots, such as false signatures. Sullivan says it could certainly happen but he did not directly partake in it.

Commissioner reminds Sullivan he's obligated to be accurate & truthful 👀

Carr "were signatures forged".
Sullivan "my educated guess is yes but I do not recall specific instances where I witnessed this but it wouldn't surprise me".
Carr "were some signatures returned in a timeframe that wouldn't be possible unless they were forged".
Sullivan "yes".

Sullivan struggling to answer questions on if it happened/ when/ by whom as he says he never personally witnessed it & certainly never went around asking people directly about it.
Has said he likely discussed it happening in Byrne's office with staff there, just generally.

WHEW these graphs on reissued ballots are not a happy place.

Interesting the data for them came from the ALP.

Interesting. Sullivan points out that in that data, in 2018 one of the branches mentioned in there didn't actually exist at the time. Hm.
This was, again, provided by Labor HQ.

Sullivan admits to driving around picking up ballots during working hours.

Carr just asked if ballots had been collected from people who were deceased or overseas.
Sullivan says he can't quite remember.

Carr "let's see if these help your memory". Oh damn this should be good 👀

OHHH these texts.
Sullivan sending to Somyurek that they need more renewal forms & $.
Then goes on that they can't find one respondent on Campaign Central, he may be deceased.

This is *bad* if they used a ballot from a deceased person, my god.

Now confirming they were all using Nick McClennen's log ins to use Campaign Central - they'd log in as him.
OH. McClennen's access got expanded to all of VIC at one point 😶. That's just, insane.

Debating on the current line of questioning relating to the potentially deceased member. Witness legal rep, Ginsbourg, concerned this implies widespread practice. Commissioner knocks it back, says once isn't widespread anyway & if widespread it's relevant to pervasive culture.

Carr points out 'a dead person isn't going to have signed a renewal form'.
Sullivan 'I believe the party sends renewal forms automatically'.

Carr is trying to get to something here..

Think he's trying to get to the point that Sullivan has accidentally mentioned collecting a form that may be linked to a dead person. Therefore - who signed it.

Yikesssssss.

Sullivan may have REALLY hurt himself here relating to him checking with Somyurek about the deceased persons ballot.
Sullivan looking a tad sweaty now.

It is hard to describe in single tweet just how f**king bad this is for Labor right now 😐

SCREAMING. Carr asking if Somyurek could provide pre-filled forms that could then be printed for signature by the member.
AS "yes that could happen"
Carr "what about if you just skipped a step & just print it out & sign it yourself & take it to HQ with Somyurek's money". WHEW 🔥

Sullivan claims that second half would not have been something he would do, but admits it is entirely possible that this could happen.

So. Much. Yikes.

Carr "did Somyurek have a contact in head office that could provide pre-filled renewal forms for members".
Sullivan says he doesn't know the contact that would be.

Dying over this. IBAC/ commissioner arguing that it would be easy to forge renewals of members who never really had an interest in being members anyway. Sullivan says it would be dumb but certainly possible.

Sullivan talking about the 'price' of getting into politics in an imperfect world.
References 'cascading rationalisations'. The exercise in mental gymnastics required where what's necessary & what's right clash & everything seems necessary to meet the ends you need.

Honestly this speech will be an incredible transcript that will hold quite the light up to some of the cultural issues that snowball in politics. Equal parts eloquent and alarming.

OOP. Sullivan just admitted he did factional work in Kieu's office as well, that this was part of the arrangement with Somyurek of him going to work there.

Commissioner "did any of the electoral offices you worked in ever tell you not to do factional work?".

Sullivan "no".

Well, that's them straight in the 💩.

This is like watching a hunter (Carr) play with his food (Sullivan).

Carr "why did you need to tell Somyurek you were quitting, was he like your unofficial boss?"
Sullivan says yes, that he was slightly apprehensive to tell him.

YIKES. Carr drops in there that Sullivan referred to Somyurek in texts as 'Mein Fuhrer' in private texts to friends when quitting.

Quite the picture to paint..

Sullivan visibly sweating & just called Somyurek a megalomaniac following his accumulation of power within the party. Yikes.

Sullivan "it's not as if we didn't know what we were doing was wrong. That's why the rules are there, but they clearly only do so much".
Another excellent speech on his & others decisions to repeatedly & consciously break rules & show loyalty to a party machine over the public.

Commissioner planning to adjourn Sullivan's summons - he therefore may be able to be cross examined towards the end of the hearings, by Somyurek's counsel, if the Commissioner approves the submission to do so. So he may (likely) make a return yet.

The next day of public hearings will be next Monday around 10am.
One week down, many more to go.