Last Monday saw another "mini-scandal" erupt as there were claims of branch stacking in a Labor branch linked to current minister Lily D'Ambrosio. For those who are not familiar with the term, branch stacking refers to the act of recruiting or signing up members for a local branch of a political party for the purposes of influencing the pre-selection of candidates or of influencing party policy. The catch to this is that the people who are being signed up, generally have no real interest in doing so and their memberships are more often than not paid for (in cash) by people who want to gain influence.
To be clear if the memberships were paid for by those who signed up, this wouldn't be branch stacking but because it's being paid for by others, it constitutes branch stacking. It also is NOT limited to Labor as the Liberal Party have had their fair share of branch stacking issues.
The reason that Labor get a bad rap for this though is because of the branch stacking scandal that occurred in 2020 when Adem Somyurek was caught on film and recorded talking about stacking branches of the Labor Party. Somyurek and those involved were dealt with while the Victorian Labor Party was subject to a full review of their membership and operations by former Premier Steve Bracks and former Federal Minister Jenny Macklin.
As part of their review, they did a full audit of the membership and many branches were hit by reductions in numbers. One of the hardest hit was the Lalor South branch of the ALP linked to current Minister for Climate Action Lily D'Ambrosio. The Lalor South branch was reduced from around 130 members to less than 20 which indicates that there were a lot of dodgy memberships at play there. Having done this, that in theory should've been the end of the matter.
Except it wasn't! It was exclusively revealed that in the process of branch stacking, the signatures of 2 DECEASED people were forged despite people knowing that they had passed away. It's one thing to branch stack and pay for memberships of people who didn't really want to join using cash but it's quite another for signatures of deceased people to be forged. That is crossing the line into fraud and is something that 110% needs to be investigated properly except so far, the response from Premier Daniel Andrews has been quite hypocritical. When Somyurek was busted, Andrews was quick to refer him and that scandal to IBAC but in the case of D'Ambrosio, Andrews has instead chosen to defend and back her. While the obvious reason for this is that D'Ambrosio is part of the Premier's Socialist Left faction and has the Premier's full support, it's a sizeable double standard but it's something we've come to expect from Premier Andrews.
It took the Liberal Party to refer Lily D'Ambrosio and the Lalor South branch of the ALP to IBAC. This referral doesn't guarantee that it will be investigated but in this instance, this is something that absolutely needs to be looked at. The only concern at this point in time is that at the moment, there is no official Commissioner of IBAC as we presently have Acting Commissioner Stephen Farrow in charge.
This matters because the Andrews Govt are the ones who will appoint the next Commissioner of IBAC and there is a genuine concern that any such appointment could be conditional on NOT investigating Lily D'Ambrosio. I am not suggesting there will be interference in IBAC's operations but given the tumultuous end to former Commissioner Robert Redlich's term, it is not something that can be easily dismissed.
Right now there are a few questions that D'Ambrosio needs to answer and quickly 1. Did she have any knowledge of branch-stacking in the Lalor South branch that was designed to benefit her? a) If so, why didn't she report her suspicions to the ALP or to IBAC? b) If not, did anyone close to her have knowledge of these activities?
2. Did any branch stacking activities occur from within her electorate office? a) If so, did she have knowledge of this? 3. Was she aware that person/s were involved in deliberately forging the signatures of deceased people for branch membership? Lily D'Ambrosio may very well be innocent of these allegations and until/if proven otherwise, she is entitled to the presumption of innocence. In saying that though, it raises a very troubling question in my mind that should be followed up on When IBAC investigated Somyurek's faction back in 2020, why did they not take a look at the Socialist Left faction of Daniel Andrews at the same time? That to me is actually the most extraordinary part of all this.
Branch stacking is undoubtedly a scourge in politics and is something that needs to be eradicated. All parties do it and any who are involved should be held accountable but when you throw fraud into the mix, that is a problem and also speaks to the integrity or lack thereof of the Victorian Labor Party. While people dismiss this as a minor story of no significance, this also speaks to the decline of integrity in Victorian politics as a whole and that is something that should concern all of us
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