Thread by @PoliBard

So just to give everybody a summary of the #OpWatts evidence form this morning's hearings -

#Dodgy, #Dodgy, #Dodgy

Garotti isn't a good witness. He was clearly wanting to be a big player, whether he actually was or not, and is trying to downplay himself to the commission.

But they are having none of it, and keep referring him to previous statements, and evidence they had locked and loaded that Garotti wasn't aware of.

One thing shines through yet again. Labor's internal party culture is/was rotten AF, and they don't learn from their mistakes.

Much of these activities can't be recalled in any detail, because they were so run of the mill they weren't remarkable enough to be memorable. And the commissioner once again brings up #RedShirts to clarify that the witness of the day was aware of it, and nothing changed after it

Afternoon update from #OpWatts
The practise of "warehousing" was further investigated and CA & CR pushed the witness hard about his failure to notice key patterns in this practice. In particular they noted many members with an address of "PO Box 82" which came up again later.

This is the mailing address of the SACOV, who Garotti helped to prepare funding grant applications for, and it seems far fetched that he didn't notice their mailing address appearing on ALP membership forms. SACOV came back in frame again later when text messages were discussed..

Involving a request from Haraco asking about a multicultural fund grant for SACOV that hadn't been approved, and was chased up with Somyurek by Garotti, Somyurek intending to chase it up with Robin Scott. Seems Labor availed themselves of public money to reward folks a lot....

Ballot reissuing came up again, as part of a discussion about ballot harvesting. There seemed to be a lot of this going on, and today specifically covered a take over attempt of the Yan Yean branch by Somyurek and the mechanics of how it was done.

There was also considerable focus on attempts made to secure employment for Haraco, and his daughter, and how either would be seen as a reward for effort. They clearly used these tax payer funded jobs as factional currency. Right at the end of the day Pakula's name got dropped in

Via a text exchange, Garotti asked that Somyurek follow up with Pakula to secure Haraco a paid job on the coronial council. No doubt this will be further explored, but could be very bad news for Pakula if he was running favours for Somyurek.

And finally, something I did not expect, the Commissioner appeared to have a go at Labor over the limited scope of the Bracks/Macklin report. He stated that it seemed to be limited to investigating mid level factional players breaking Labor party rules.

He lamented that MPs and their electoral officers didn't seem to have been investigated, and specifically that public money misappropriation wasn't seemingly focused on by the investigation. Did not sound impressed at all by the lack of substance in the report.

Overall a bad day for Labor. Garotti was a terrible witness, tried to be dumb and clever at the same time which never works well. IBAC had all the receipts for their tricky questions, and it took Garotti half a day to work this out.
Kairouz mentioned a lot, Nazih Elasmar too.

Labor might be looking for a new MLC president soon. And another MLC member's name keeps coming up as a factional heavy in Kaushaliya Vaghela. She's gunna have questions thrown her way soon. Robin Scott(already resigned) also mentioned again many times.

See you tomorrow!

And just for fun, here's a few of the exhibits I managed to screen cap containing text message exchanges. I'd like to always do this and put them in the thread, but it's hard to keep up, and at times, the screen resolution drops and makes them unreadable.