Anne Moran hits out again over The Advertiser article on fellow city council rival

Anne Moran has again hit out at an Advertiser story on a city council rival – but strangely enough didn’t have the same concerns when we profiled her before the 2014 election.

Veteran Adelaide city councillor Anne Moran has doubled down on her criticism of the Advertiser for running a Father’s Day profile of a council colleague – but we can reveal how her claims seem deeply hypocritical.

On FIVEaa this morning, Ms Moran insisted her criticism of the article about Arman Abrahimzadeh’s confrontation with his wife-murdering father in jail was “insensitively timed” with council elections on the horizon.

After the article was published, she told The Advertiser she “would appreciate a similar one … (the timing) seems very unfair … everyone has a life story”.

“My problem was we are in an electorate cycle now and this story is quite an old story, he met his father in January and that was a wonderful thing for him to share with us and I enjoyed reading about it,” Cr Moran said on Wednesday morning.

Hosts David Penberthy and Will Gooding on Wednesday morning said they had been inundated with callers on the text line with a vast majority saying Ms Moran had missed the point and seemed to be acting with “a degree of self-absorption”.

Ms Moran insisted “the very timing of it in the outset of council elections was what I was concerned about”.

But the Sunday Mail and Advertiser.com.au previously published a comprehensive profile of Cr Moran in the lead-up to a council election, and she didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

In 2014, just over six months before that year’s council elections, a detailed profile of Ms Moran outlined her philosophy as a councillor, her childhood trauma, her struggles as a teacher and her fake zebra, tiger and leopard-skin rugs.

It included her “key causes”, a CV fact file and saw her respond to being “branded the suburb’s chief nimby, naysayer and media tart”.

She said at the time that “people expect their councillors to be frank and fearless and say stuff”.

“They can call me a media whore all they want but I think it’s important.”

In the immediate aftermath of that election, The Advertiser ran a separate “Lunch with Anne Moran” feature further exploring her agenda on council.

The Advertiser article on Arman Abrahimzadeh, ahead of Father’s Day, made no mention of the council or his election campaign agenda, but was rather a compelling story about a man confronting his mother’s killer – his father – and how that has impacted him as a father.

Adelaide City Councillor Anne Moran. Picture: Emma Brasier

She said the meeting of Mr Abrahimzadeh had happened earlier in the year and doubled down on her criticism of the timing.

”But I think The Advertiser have been very aggressively supporting Team Adelaide as I think you can easily see by the articles and to me this seems like another extension of that,” she said on radio on Wednesday morning.

“I’m running against Arman for two of the seats (for) area councillor and I don’t think anybody could not see that this is certainly a good story for him – an interesting story getting his name out.

“I think the timing was insensitive.”