Thread by @PoliBard

Ok, time for today's #IBACsummary from #OpWatts. In the witness box was Christine Kelly, and boy was she cranky about it😂

Kelly's history was working in Marlene Khairouz office as an electoral officer. ALP member of 34 years, father was also an electoral officer.

She knew absolutely the difference between constituent work, and party political work, and made great pains to explain she never did factional work on the public dime, and even insisted all her workmates did too, despite evidence to the contrary.

Before proceedings started, Mr Carr stated for the record that IBAC had made a request for documents to the ALP, and they were denying that request, despite agreeing to cooperate with IBAC as part of the Bracks/Macklin report findings. More on this later.

Carr tried several times to get Kelly to admit to factional activity, but she would only admit to occasional work, always on her own time. She was clearly aware of the rules of the game every other Labor staffer seems completely bloody clueless about.

She was asked about several other workers and contended they all worked legitimately. But then we hit a snag, when IBAC introduced evidence of a transcript of interview with Kaushalia Vaghela, whose husband Dinesh Chouhan had worked for Kairouz, and also Scott.

During her deposition, KV was forced to concede that hubby had only sent 1 legit work email for the entirety of 2020. Staggering nepotism, and I don't see how she survives, TBH. This is not the first time her name has come up, she's clearly a huge factional player.

Next, Kelly was shown several letters that were all forged, purported to be from members, giving permission for Kelly to pick up their ballots. Kelly played dumb on this, had no idea who wrote them, but conceded that Psaila(Wednesday's witness) was likely to be behind them

Kelly was also shown some sort of "membership register" which appeared to be tracking which members had ballots collected, and who they were voting for (all Khairouz for the info she was shown.) Kelly claimed no knowledge of such activities, and no inclusion by Khairouz.

Carr asked about the 2018 national conference vote at length, and Kelly claimed little involvement and indifference to the process. Yet, during the hearing, Sumeyya from the Age tweeted out a pic of the national conference ballot with Kelly's name on it. Seems a bit odd.....

It may be that Carr had specifically requested this after being tipped off, but didn't go there without having the evidence in hand. If he knew for certain, I'm staggered he didn't ask, so I think he didn't know about it, or didn't have the evidence to confront Kelly with.

Overall it was a bit of a slow day, with a cantankerous witness who was either very slippery, or almost completely ignorant of branch stacking activities, which seems hard to believe based on everybody elses testimony so far. Carr seemed reluctant to release her from her summons.

But the commissioner decided to release her anyway, and so it's likely that's the last we've seen for her. But she laid the groundwork for a lot of awkward questions to come at Psaila with, when hearings resume next Wed.

The Vaghela transcripts were damning. She needs to go.....

@threadreaderapp unroll please.