A former Labor strategist has been remembered as a daring, playful and shrewd "partisan warrior" with a deep love of family.
Labor luminaries gathered at Perth's Optus Stadium on Friday to farewell Tim Picton, who helped guide the party to a landslide 2021 West Australian election victory.
The 36-year-old former WA state secretary suffered a serious head injury after an alleged assault outside a Perth nightclub on December 27.
Mr Picton was placed on life support, with his death confirmed on Monday.
Chantal Kreviazuk's Feels Like Home greeted the arrival of his family as an Adelaide Crows scarf sat draped on a table with photographs and his childhood stuffed toy Peanut, which he passed down to his four-year-old daughter Charlotte.
Mr Picton's tearful wife Priya Brown spoke about the couple often arguing over what to watch on television, and Mr Picton always getting emotional at the funeral scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
"About the third time I made him watch it, he said 'you know I've Googled this poem ... it's actually part of a 1936 play and the poem was written as a satirical farewell to a vanquished political rival'," she said.
"So on behalf of the fact that Tim loved vanquishing political rivals, on behalf of the fact that he wore his heart on his sleeve, on behalf of the 12 years of bickering, on behalf of the love that my daughter and I have for him, this is Funeral Blues."
Mr Picton met Ms Brown at karaoke in Adelaide in 2014 at 2am, ordering her a guava Cruiser and a shot.
Five months later, he confessed his love for her while driving from Adelaide to Melbourne after both accepted jobs on the Victorian election campaign.
His older brother, South Australian Health Minister Chris Picton, said Mr Picton and Ms Brown had recently sat down to compose their will and he had left clear instructions.
"He wanted everybody to be very, very, very sad," his brother said to raucous laughter.
The young father would draft campaign ads from scratch, was strategic, meticulous, stubborn and sometimes made things personal.
"Despite being such a partisan warrior, he's respected from people on both sides of politics," the SA minister said.
His sister Jo described her brother as "fearless" and recalled him once building his own BMX jumps with a mate.
"He immediately fell on the BMX handbrake, which went through his thigh, millimetres from his femoral artery," she said.
"There's no doubt that, at times, he could have used a little more trepidation, but then he wouldn't have been Tim."
Despite being four years younger, his sister described him as her "protector and champion", and it pained her that in the last few weeks "we could not protect him".
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew across the Nullarbor for the memorial, joining WA Premier Roger Cook and predecessor Mark McGowan.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and federal Labor ministers Amanda Rishworth and Don Farrell, whom Mr Picton worked for in his early years, also travelled to pay their respects.
Mr Albanese penned a letter for Mr Picton's daughter to read when she grew up, spelling out how much her dad was loved by everyone who came into contact with him.
He hailed Mr Picton as the "architect" of not only Mr McGowan's landslide election victory in 2021 but federal Labor's successful WA campaign in 2022.
"Tim had an amazing future that was cut short by this dreadful act of violence," Mr Albanese said.
The turnout for the event demonstrated Mr Picton's "extraordinary contribution" to the party, Mr Cook said.
"He was an incredible warrior for the Labor Party," he said.
