‘That’s politics’: Inside the Liberal Party’s branch-stacking machine

The drab outer-suburban Melbourne electorate office of federal MP Kevin Andrews is an unlikely place to launch a political heist.

But in 2018, it was part of a scheme similar to the Adem Somyurek school of factional hardball. It involved installing enough members into party branches to control the preselection of favoured political candidates and win key internal party positions. And as with Mr Somyurek, the disgraced state Labor MP forced out of cabinet in June, the scheme used fake members and taxpayer-funded staffers to amass significant political power.

This time, though, the branch-stacking operation was on the Liberal side of the aisle. And the plan, revealed in secret recordings, colourful social media communications as well as a tranche of leaked files and planning documents, implicates one of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's own frontbenchers, Michael Sukkar, along with Kevin Andrews, a former cabinet minister and the longest-serving member in the House of Representatives.

Michael Sukkar.Credit:The Age

The most serious allegations facing Mr Sukkar, the federal Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing, and Mr Andrews involves their dealings with Liberal backroom powerbroker Marcus Bastiaan. Taped phone calls capture Mr Sukkar plotting to remove four sitting Victorian Liberal state MPs while Mr Bastiaan is recorded targeting up to six federal Liberal MPs by 2020.

Mr Sukkar denies any involvement in branch stacking and Mr Bastiaan insists he never breached the Liberal Party constitution. But in private, Mr Bastiaan was candid about his ambitions.

"So why wouldn't we just change the [party] constitution, which is our plan, and open up preselections for 2020 when we've got the numbers all eligible," he asked of his allies in a call recorded in 2018, "[when] we're locked in, we're institutionalised, we've got our members in the upper house, we've got a state director around our finger."

Marcus Bastiaan:

Among the leaked material provided to The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes by half-a-dozen Liberal insiders is a memo created by Mr Bastiaan and seemingly endorsed by Mr Sukkar, who responded, "good summary". It sets out a scheme to build the Bastiaan-Sukkar faction's power by giving taxpayer-funded jobs in Kevin Andrews' office to Mr Bastiaan's operatives. Employed as electorate officers, who usually carry out mundane constituent work for their MP, these staffers were instead directed to recruit members for the faction.

Records show Mr Sukkar's younger brother, Paul, was employed as an electorate officer in 2017. It is a breach of federal and state laws for an electorate officer to work for the benefit of other MPs or engage in party political activity. But in secretly taped conversations, Mr Bastiaan was scathing of that restraint.

Marcus Bastiaan and Michael Kroger.

The 28-year-old quickly made his presence felt on Spring Street and in Canberra, partly via an alliance with Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger. Mr Kroger was never totally comfortable with Mr Bastiaan, sources said, but he ultimately embraced the young firebrand, given his control of the votes of dozens if not hundreds of new party members.

In April 2018, Mr Bastiaan's years of amassing numbers across the state culminated in an extraordinary scene: members loyal to him bearing proxy voting forms arrived en masse on chartered buses to the party's state council and delivered a thumping win to the party's right-wing hardliners. They re-elected Mr Kroger as state president, voted Mr Bastiaan to be one of the party's vice-presidents and gained control of the powerful administrative committee. Party elders had seen nothing like it. At the heart of Mr Bastiaan's success was his ability to target certain conservative religions and ethnic groups. At least 10 of the 78 people elected to the Liberals' administrative bodies at the state council were Mormons.

The influx of social conservatives had an immediate impact on Liberal Party policy. The Bastiaan-Sukkar faction opposed policies such as Safe Schools and euthanasia, leading some senior figures such as former state director John Ridley to complain they were no longer "listening to, or interested in, the community mainstream".

Despite concerns from party moderates, Mr Guy ran a hardline campaign focused largely on crime rates among South Sudanese youth. The party suffered a 7 per cent statewide swing, defeated in safe Liberal seats such as Hawthorn and coming within hundreds of votes of losing Brighton where the divisive Liberal candidate, James Newbury, was almost defeated by a teenage Labor candidate. Mr Newbury had been a groomsman at Mr Bastiaan's wedding.

Marcus Bastiaan:

Marcus Bastiaan and wife Stephanie at their wedding. James Newbury, state MP for Brighton, is second to the left of Mr Bastiaan.

After the election loss, recriminations were swift. Former premier Jeff Kennett called for Mr Kroger to resign live on television on election night, which he did within a week along with Mr Guy. The same month, The Age reported leaked text exchanges involving Mr Bastiaan in which he referred to "fag Catholics" who were "so far in the closet, if they end up coming out they will blow up big time with lots of secrets" while an associate referred to Indian members as "curries".

Mr Bastiaan denied sending the messages, with his lawyers suggesting they could be faked. Regardless, he had resigned from his leadership role weeks before the election, citing family reasons, though he remained a party member.

It can be hard to separate hubris from reality with Mr Bastiaan, but new leaked communications obtained by The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes do reveal ugly and immature posturing. In private conversations in 2017 between Mr Bastiaan and the vice-president of the Young Liberals, Alex Lisov, Mr Bastiaan describes Senator James Paterson's wife — who was at the time childless – as having a "barren womb". Mr Lisov responded by mocking the Patersons for having "no family values".

"They hate the institution of family," he wrote.

In another private message, Mr Bastiaan derided senior Victorian Liberal official Sean Armistead, who is Indigenous, as a "fake Aboriginal". When another Liberal operative joked that Mr Armistead was involved in "pagan abo rubbish" such as "praying to the rainbow serpent", Mr Bastiaan responded: "Ha ha."

That Mr Bastiaan wielded real political power within the party was an open secret among MPs. Even today, Liberal sources say he and his allies are not afraid to use it.

POWERBROKERS AND POWER PLAYS

The recordings reveal a close factional bond with Mr Sukkar, one of the most powerful conservative Liberals in federal politics. So close that in 2018, Mr Sukkar described Mr Bastiaan in one taped conversation as "a very important piece of the team".

Michael Sukkar:

Evidence from memos, documents and recordings suggests that while Mr Sukkar was not actively involved in stacking Liberal branches, he benefited from it. In one private conversation, Mr Sukkar described the pair's tense but mutually beneficial relationship.

"Marcus has got to realise he is not the dictator," Mr Sukkar says. "None of us have individual numbers, we carry little groups of support and I think he has finally realised that he is not indispensable and I think that's a very, very healthy thing for him to now understand."

But one taped conversation exposes Mr Sukkar's own political plotting. He talks about their faction using its numbers to remove or shift a group of state upper house members in Victoria after they angered conservatives by voting in support of a euthanasia bill.

"My view is there is four people in the upper house on our side who have broken faith: Simon Ramsay, Bruce Atkinson, Mary Wooldridge, Ed O'Donohue. I think we can get rid of Simon Ramsay. We can potentially get rid of Bruce Atkinson, that's harder, but we can, it is still in the mix. So that is two out of the four gone."

Mr Sukkar's plan for Mr O'Donohue, an opposition frontbencher, was to shift him into the less-influential Mornington Peninsula lower house seat of Nepean. The plan never eventuated.

"In isolation, someone would look, for example, at the decision we've taken to support Ed O'Donohue," Mr Sukkar said. "That decision is not really consistent with our values. Because, in isolation, you look at that and you say: 'Well hold on, why are we facilitating a creep like O'Donohue into the lower house?' And then you go, 'let's look at the bigger picture here'."

Marcus Bastiaan: Eyes on a Senate seat.Credit:The Age

Mr Bastiaan also set his sights on sitting federal MPs. In one recording, he discussed his desire to remove the federal member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, and former minister Kelly O'Dwyer, who has since resigned.

"We're going to have to fight very hard to beat Wilson and we can't get rid of O'Dwyer because if we do we'll be blamed for losing the election," Mr Bastiaan said in 2018. The idea was to wait for 2020, when he controlled more numbers and then "get rid of six of these guys rather than get rid of two and wake all of them up".

In their places, the faction hoped to install its own loyalists – including Mr Bastiaan himself – in Parliament. His preference was for the Senate "where I don't have to deal with constituent problems but I could continue to run the faction, so I could then fill Parliament both state and federal with good people."

Marcus Bastiaan:

Former Victorian Liberal premier Ted Ballieu has once again called for his party to take decisive action.

"We are talking about a few people seeking to rig elections, internal elections, in the Liberal Party, and I think that it's just staggering," said Mr Baillieu who would not speak about Mr Bastiaan directly. "And I can only presume that there are people who think that's more important than the great challenges Victorians are facing, and that's to their shame."

Under pressure: Tim Wilson and Kelly O'Dwyer.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Last week, Liberal state director Sam McQuestin launched an inquiry into branch stacking. A review of party membership for the 2019-2020 financial year had "found a small number of possible breaches of the party's rules around payment of other members' fees", he said in a statement. It's unclear what exactly his investigation is targeting. In the days leading up to the publication of this investigation, News Corporation mastheads have run stories attacking factional opponents of Mr Bastiaan and Mr Sukkar.

'FINE-TUNING THE MACHINE'

It is a critical 2018 memo written by Mr Bastiaan that best describes his faction's modus operandi. Recruiting members is a labour-intensive operation. The manpower required to fuel what Mr Bastiaan describes as an organisational "machine" is obtained by fake political jobs paid for by taxpayers.

The operation was conducted from Kevin Andrews' office.Credit:The Age

The document was viewed and endorsed by Mr Sukkar. It appears to outline breaches of the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act by showing staffers in Kevin Andrews' office were directed to conduct party political work while paid by the taxpayer. There is no suggestion Mr Andrews knew of the memo, but other correspondence suggests that Mr Andrews was directed to hire the factional staff and had at least a general awareness they may be engaged in factional work.

One factional operative, Thilaga Jayakumaran, who came from the Mormon church, was listed as working five days a week as an electorate officer for Mr Andrews in early 2018. It is a job that the Department of Finance paid her $1000 a week to perform.

But Ms Jayakumaran's actual tasks, according to the memo, were to "take a leading role in turning out numbers and facilitating proxies for state council" as well as "databasing of new members, facilitating factional operations". Ms Jayakumaran was directed by Mr Bastiaan. "Marcus told her to provide Ivan more support," the memo says, a reference to former state administrative committee member and Mormon elder Ivan Stratov.

While the law requires electorate officers to "work under the sole direction of the employing senator or member", the memo suggests Mr Andrews' electorate officers reported at least partly to Mr Bastiaan. "I feel I have the capacity to manage them," Mr Bastiaan wrote.

Despite her job, according to the memo, Ms Jayakumaran lacked the skills to perform electorate officer work. "Marcus told her to learn office skills at Kevin's so she can take up and [sic] EO role if required," the memo said. When called for a response, Ms Jayakumaran hung up the phone.

Another identified in the memo as being a factional operative, Cameron Manassa, is listed as working three days as an electorate officer each week for Mr Andrews, of which "three hours per day" was to be spent on "membership resources on eligible pre-selectors". Another operative working one day a week as an electorate officer was, according to the Bastiaan memo, "recruiting, however focus needs to be on numbers".

Labor's Adem Somyurek was accused of using taxpayer-funded staff for his factional work while the "red shirts" affair exposed the Victorian Labor government over a similar misuse of money. But Mr Sukkar's response to Mr Bastiaan's memo is to describe it as a "good summary". And in a secret recording, when questioned on using electorate officers in the manner exposed during the "red shirts" affair, Mr Bastiaan was scathing of the rules.

"Who gives a shit … we are trying to win a f—ing seat mate … The reality is, this is the hardest f—ing business now to get a job while you're a candidate. It's impossible because you can't work and also campaign so the party has to provide some sort of cover … That's a political, that's a reality. You can't change it. That's politics."

Corruption expert Geoffrey Watson, SC, who analysed the secret recordings of Mr Somyurek, described the Bastiaan memo endorsed by Mr Sukkar as "prima facie evidence of the misuse of taxpayers' money".

"I very much doubt that Sukkar can or should remain a minister of the Crown. A minister is a position of real power and thus real trust and you cannot have it in the hands of people who abuse it," Mr Watson said.

Asked last week if he had ever stacked branches or paid for others' membership, Mr Bastiaan said he had not "willingly or knowingly breached the [Liberal Party] constitution". Quizzed about whether he had ever installed electorate office staff to do factional work, he said: "That's not the role of the electorate officer. What they choose to [do] outside of office hours is their business."

Mr Bastiaan said his role in the Liberal Party in the past 2½ years had been "zero". "I work Saturday and Sunday trying to keep a business going," he said.

Mr Sukkar denied he had been involved in branch stacking either on his own account or in support of Mr Bastiaan and was "positive" he had never endorsed the scheme allegedly run through Kevin Andrews' office.

He said "it can be hard" to control the work that party people do in your electorate office but added: "If recruitment was going on, you're going to have to show that that recruitment was going on during those hours, and if it was, that's wrong. Absolutely wrong."

Kevin Andrews said in a statement: "Electorate staff employed in my office are expected to abide by relevant workplace laws and standards."

Michael Sukkar:

FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Mr Sukkar's younger brother, Paul, was one of the factional operatives employed five days a week for stints in 2017 and 2018 in Kevin Andrews' office. His duties, according to the memo, included "recruitment for Menzies" (Mr Andrews' east-suburban seat) and "recruitment outside Menzies".

While Paul Sukkar might have been qualified for the job, the Department of Finance prohibits MPs from hiring their relatives as electorate officers to prevent the perception of nepotism. Mr Sukkar did not employ Paul but Mr Andrews did.

An August 2017 message to Paul Sukkar from Mr Bastiaan directs him to "Please help … on your relevant Liberal days to … initiate and follow through transfers of existing members into their home electorate. Update the entire Party database. This is expected to take at least six weeks."

Employment records show that by 2018, Paul Sukkar was shifted by the Bastiaan faction from his job in Mr Andrews' office to a role paid for out of the Liberal Party's budget, funded via political donations. Michael Sukkar said in a statement he was aware that his brother, Paul, had "worked with the Member of Menzies" Kevin Andrews in 2017 and 2018 but "my understanding was that Paul was employed by the Liberal Party".

"He was there to support Kevin. He was there to help Kevin," Michael Sukkar said.

It seems the faction liked to keep things in the family. Mr Bastiaan's wife, Stephanie, also did a stint as an electorate officer in Mr Sukkar's office. In various messages, the Bastiaans query if an Andrews' electorate officer, Nick Lamanna, was doing enough factional work. Mr Bastiaan complained Mr Lamanna was only engaged in "general office activity", was "underworked" and doing "nothing of note".

Stephanie Bastiaan.Credit:The Age

Stephanie Bastiaan was scathing. "Lamanna is a waste at Kevin's office … he [is] only doing EO [Electorate Officer] stuff," she complained. "We've got enough freeloaders in our faction – don't need non-factional people too! Kev needs to wake up. Lol!"

DOSA HUT AND DUTTON

Mr Bastiaan's biggest recruiting grounds have been Mormon churches, through Mr Stratov, and the Indian community where he has had the help of Rampal Muthyala, the owner of Indian restaurant chain Dosa Hut. Mr Bastiaan has always claimed these members are legitimate, have paid for their own memberships and are committed to the party. But evidence collected by The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes suggests otherwise.

Confidential communications between Mr Bastiaan and Mr Lisov show the pair discussing giving cash to a Liberal operative in 2017 so he can pay for six new members.

"He had $150," Mr Lisov complained. "He has not produced me six names." Mr Bastiaan told Mr Lisov to find out what happened but to "be careful leaving anything written to him" because "he's possible to blow up". Mr Lisov responded that he was "very careful" and did not "discuss anything with money in writing".

"I'm amazed he's taken your money and is relaxed about it. C—," Mr Bastiaan texted. Mr Lisov responded wryly that the money was "technically yours".

A key indicator of whether members of political parties are genuine is that they pay their own membership fees and fill out their own forms. In a leaked 2016 email, Mr Bastiaan instructed Mr Muthyala to fill in forms in bulk.

Stephanie and Marcus Bastiaan with Dosa Hut owner and factional operative Rampal Muthyala.

"Tick the box saying they are happy to help at elections," Mr Bastiaan instructed him, and "tick the box saying automatic renewal, this saves time next year".

The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes have spoken to about 30 people who said they were recruited to the Liberal Party by Mr Muthyala, including four young Liberals who joined in 2018. Of the 30, four admitted on the record that Mr Muthyala had paid for their memberships. Two outlined a scam by which they paid for their membership with their own credit cards but were then reimbursed by Mr Muthyala, an apparent attempt to avoid raising alarm bells at Liberal headquarters.

Liberal member Sisindra Gandavarapu said he had temporarily paid $50 to Mr Muthyala to fund a membership application and that about 15 family and friends had done the same. Then they got their money back.

"We just pay him $50 then he does the membership … and he pays you back the money to your account," Mr Gandavarapu said.

Kishore Yannam said Mr Muthyala had recruited him and asked him to vote in internal party elections. "One year he paid for me. The closing date was approaching, so he paid," Mr Yannam said.

Marcus Bastiaan:

Mr Bastiaan and Mr Muthyala are close. Mr Bastiaan invited the restaurant chain owner to his wedding and helped bring former prime minister Tony Abbott to the opening of one of Mr Muthyala's suburban Dosa Huts. Mr Bastiaan also supported Mr Muthyala's ultimately unsuccessful push to win Liberal preselection for an upper house seat in 2018, according to confidential party files.

Michael Sukkar and Rampal Muthyala.

The year before, in 2017, Mr Bastiaan asked a federal minister if he could do a "favour" for Mr Muthyala by getting Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to assist with a visa request. An email from Mr Bastiaan asked the minister to see "if there is anything he can do with this re PD's office".

"If to [sic] hard don't worry – would be a favour to Rampal."

There is no evidence the request was either made to Mr Dutton or agreed to. Mr Muthyala denied all wrongdoing.

MARCUS AND THE MORMONS

Steve Holland, who chairs the local Liberal branch in the seat of Dunkley on the Mornington Peninsula, has had enough.

Earlier this year, he rejected two "fake" members recruited by Mr Stratov, saying they "openly state that not only are they unwilling to help the Liberal Party in winning elections through volunteering, but some of them have told me that they may not even vote Liberal at the ballot box".

Mr Holland said the focus on whether non-genuine members were from conservative church groups had obscured a bigger issue: that stacking was sometimes occurring with impunity and driving away real party members.

"I have no doubt that branch stacking occurs," Mr Holland said. "I think it's more discreet in the Liberal Party but the damage that it can do is the same regardless … I would describe it as a wet blanket on genuine membership engagement."

Mr Stratov recently quit the Liberal Party's administrative committee, saying he had moved to Ukraine.

Marcus Bastiaan:

A major stacking operation appears to have been organised by the Bastiaan faction in 2017. It involved putting dozens of members into the party's Ringwood branch even though most of the new members did not live in the electorate.

But some Liberal members signed up to the Ringwood state electoral conference by the Bastiaan faction in 2017 said they did not know why they were signed up there because they had never lived in the locality. Maddie, who did not want to use her full name, said she paid for her membership initially but did not pay in subsequent years. The membership was continually renewed anyway.

"I ended up texting someone saying, 'What's going on? Do I have to do anything? Am I a member?' Then I get another membership card in the mail and I was like, 'Oh, OK'. [The recruiter] said you don't need to worry about doing forms or anything," she said. "I had to vote [in internal Liberal Party elections] twice. I had no idea – I just did it."

Another member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was recruited by Mr Bastiaan at a religious gathering in a private home where they spoke about the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

The member paid for his own membership but said he did not know why he was placed in the Ringwood branch when he lived more than 50km away. "I never went there and had no idea why I was put in Ringwood," he said.

The Ringwood campaign appears to be the equivalent to the Labor practice of "warehousing", used by Adem Somyurek, in which people were recruited to branches using false addresses to achieve an internal party outcome. Two other members, both of whom did not want to be identified, said they joined the party because a friend asked them to. Both lived in Mount Waverley and did not know why they were placed in the Ringwood branch 15km away.

It was 2016 when whispers first began that the Bastiaan-Sukkar faction was involved in branch stacking. A covert recording of a factional meeting attended by Michael Sukkar and Mr Bastiaan in November that year captured Mr Sukkar deriding those who complained.

"The same people that talk about branch stacking bitch and moan to me that they couldn't get people onto their booths during the campaign," Mr Sukkar said.

"They're a disgrace," Mr Bastiaan said as an aside.

Michael Sukkar:

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