By Cam Lucadou-Wells
South Eastern MP Adem Somyurek has rounded on former Labor colleagues with explosive claims of branch-stacking during a statement in State Parliament on 10 December.
The former factional powerbroker was giving a “personal explanation” for his six-month absence from State Parliament since he was sacked from State Cabinet and resigned from the ALP.
He denied the reports of his alleged “industrial scale” branch-stacking – which led to his sacking in June.
60 Minutes and The Age alleged that Mr Somyurek used Parliamentary staff and paid thousands for fake memberships to stack branches.
In Parliament, Mr Somyurek described the claims as a “misrepresentation” and an “absolute outrageous lie” that led to his vote being “tainted”.
Mr Somyurek then accused the Labor Party of a “branch-stacking war” in Melbourne’s South East from at least the mid-1990s.
One side recruited from “the Vietnamese community, the Bosnian community, the Albanian community and the Latin American community”, while the other faction “would march in their Latinos, Alawite Turks, Kurds and all varieties of Sri Lankans”.
“They had the Sri Lankans – Tamils, Burghers, Sinhalese; they really had the Sri Lankan market covered – and the Greeks, Lebanese, Serbs, Afghans and rival Bosnians; they seemed to have half the Balkans covered as well.”
A Labor figure “constantly worked the phones, begging, promising seats, support for council, jobs, grants, anything”.
“He would promise anything in order to get the numbers to rock up”.
Legislative Council president Nazih Elasmar several times ordered Mr Somyurek to stick to his explanation of how he had been misrepresented.
In a point of order, Liberal MP Bruce Atkinson said Mr Somyurek’s speech was arguably impinging on an ongoing IBAC investigation into the issue.
“This particular personal explanation is well beyond what we have ever seen in this house in terms of a precedent, and indeed it brings into question a whole lot of people who have been named who do not at this point in time have an opportunity to defend themselves.”
In his speech, Mr Somyurek apologised for his secretly recorded comments aired in the reports – “appalling language” that was “perjorative to women and gay men”.
“As a person who is from an ethnic cultural minority and from a very, very unpopular religious minority, my guiding principle or philosophy is you have either signed up to and accept Western liberal democracy and all the safeguards that are built into that Western liberal democracy which guards against discrimination, or you have not.
“You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
“In making those foolish and offensive comments, I went against my principles and philosophy.”
