Thread by @PoliBard

Ok it's #IBACsummary time and wheeeew boy, was it an interesting day. The usual disgusting behaviours were canvassed, and many of the usual suspects were mentioned, so I'll try and focus on the new stuff we learned, and today's witness, Kirsten Psaila.
#OpWatts

First up, Chris Carr fronted up looking like he had a face to face argument with an old fashioned push mower, which turned out to be a bicycle accident. But after a brief apology for his appearance, he proceeded to give somebody else a bloody face, and poor old Kirsten got it.

Kirsten's Twitter bio clearly has "living on #DinduNuffin land" but Carr was having none of that, being armed with a bagful of receipts that resembled Santa's sack in a good year. And possibly Kelly's Monday indignation fest put him and the Commish in an impatient mood.

Kirsten started the day claiming she only did party work on her own time, and that all memberships paid for were due to hardship, and well, let's just say that fell apart like a pulled pork sandwich under Carr's subtly brutal interrogation techniques. He's a glory to watch.

Do a twitter search for "from:polibard #opwatts receipts" if you don't believe me. He warns the shit out of you, if you're humble enough to listen to him. And he takes great delight in springing the trap if you aren't....

And the Commish wasn't in the mood for sob stories either

Between the 2 of them, they absolutely destroyed her narrative. Many, many receipts were provided, and you could spot the moment they broke her, because it was proceeded by a "can I just say" as Kirsten tried to explain she "also did good work for constituents."

She clearly didn't understand it wasn't a performance review, it was a hunt for illegal behaviour, IBAC doesn't GAF about the good stuff you did, just the bad stuff. There was a short break after this moment, as she had the Garotti revelation in about 1/4 of the time he took.....

So the juice.....She's quite an expert branch stacking operative, MK had a lot of faith in her. She claimed ignorance of the forgery issues involved, despite having a forgery claim made against her in 2005. She denied that, and knowledge of others doing it more recently.

She came across as reasonably credible here, although I think that's because "she didn't want to know and didn't look" rather than "nothing was actually happening."

But other stuff she was fully aware of, and Carr had plenty of receipts to jog her memory.

She started the day claiming "memberships were paid by others due to hardships" and ended the day agreeing that "ballots had to be exactly right, because they'd effectively been purchased." Carr had plenty of banking receipts to make sure she understood the true situation.

Over a 5 year period, Khairouz transferred ~$60k to Psaila, who then withdrew the money in cash, which was used to pay for memberships and renewals of most likely non genuine members. She never saw that one coming. There's no good explanation for it, other than covering for MK...

It wasn't explored in depth by Carr, but it seems there was a huge drop in these transfer/cash out arrangements from 2017, from ~$15k to $1k and I suspect MK found another funding source, but we'll need to wait and see what that's about. More on that later.

Then we moved on to the 60 Mins/Age story breaking, and what MK asked her. According to Kirsten, MK asked her if she'd been involved in any branch stacking. The Commish found this very hard to believe, although to be fair, he knew what was coming later, unlike poor Kirsten.

Later phone intercepts from Somyurek/Khairouz were played, and it became obvious Psaila was a skilled operator at branch stacking ops, and well trusted by MK. Commish put it to her the real question asked by MK was "how much are you going to tell investigators?"
Psaila conceded.

Time after time, Carr and Commish tried to get Psaila to agree that "forging signatures would be an obvious short cut when these members aren't genuine" and she really didn't want to cop to that, despite her own experience with being accused of that in 2005. Very stubborn on it.

It's clear that this happened, as a case of a member asking for a ballot reissue happened within 48 hours of that ballot being completed and submitted to ALP HQ, despite many steps being required where the member had to sign(he didn't, via affidavit)

The remarkable thing here was seeing how fast the public service can make something happen when they are being paid their normal wage, but actually working for the ALP. Just needed a little bit of false penmanship, and BOOM! Job done. If only they applied that to their actual job

Another thing that came out that's thoroughly disgusting is that Labor was compiling data on citizens, not just members, and tracking ethnicity, so they new which "team captains" to send after them for recruiting. Racist fucking bastards, but good luck getting ABC's attention.

There are times when Carr seems more like a Catholic priest taking confession than an investigator. He brought Psaila to tears for a second time later in the afternoon when asking about the Labor "journey" to power. From "idealistic, starry eyed" to "cold hearted stacker."

The pairing of Carr and Redlich is accidentally brilliant. Carr seems to hate process crimes, while Redlich is clearly offended by the use of tax payers money for party business(Brings up #RedShirts endlessly) and at times they just skewer witnesses from both directions at once.

They pushed Psaila hard to acknowledge knowledge of forgery during the afternoon, but she woudn't cop to it. I think in the end she realised it must have been happening, but didn't want to think about it. Clearly a broken woman by days end, if not by lunch time.

This summary could go forever quite easily, so I'll just finish on the 2 best pieces of commentary of the day from Carr and the Commish. I'll start with Commish and leave you with Carr's, because it was Betelgeuse shades of brilliance.

Carr flat out called out Psaila for lying about conversations with Khairous after the branch stacking story broke in the Age & 60 mins. This was post phone intercept evidence, where it was clear MK had a trusted operative in Psaila doing the stacking.

He basically told her "it's not credible she asked you what you were up to, she knew in great detail, and it's far more likely she asked you what you were prepared to say to any investigation. Psaila was forced to concede this point, at this point.

Commish followed up with "so your earlier answer to the commission was misleading?" and again Psaila could only agree. I dunno if anybody's going down for perjury so far, but it's definitely today's witness so far, if so. Commish was far from happy with her lack of candour.

And finally, we have the piece de resistance from the bicycle bruised and battered Chris Carr. He took a footpath to the face just hours earlier, but while it might have taken the shine off his nose and chin, his words carried more poise than ever before.

Soooo many times today, his incantations begged the witness to lie before the commission, as he had more than the usual bagful of receipts waiting to ram down her throat. He really does telegraph his takedowns, IF you're listening, and Psaila wasn't for most of the day.

But I can tell you for sure she heard this one, and I hope all of Australia does eventually. After recounting the litany of rule breaches, the abuse of public moneys, the forgeries, the deceit, and the embedded nature of these things, Mr Carr offered this statement....

"Given you must participate in all these nefarious activities to progress through the Labor party, get pre-selected, and eventually enter Parliament, isn't it likely these people arrive in Government with a moral compass that's seriously non functional?"

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

All I can say to that is "I hope Graham Richardson was listening" because that's the most eloquent expansion of "whatever it takes" I've ever heard. Bravo, Mr Carr. Bravo.

I'll leave it there......