Jason O’Pray repurposes events Facebook page for mayor campaign promotion

A Sunshine Coast councillor has quickly removed a mayor campaign Facebook page after followers discovered he repurposed an existing page with thousands of likes.

An experienced Sunshine Coast councillor and candidate for mayor has taken down his Facebook page following backlash for repurposing his events page for his own campaign.

Flanked by family, friends, and fellow colleagues, councillor Jason O’Pray announced that he is running for mayor of Sunshine Coast Council at the Maroochydore Surf Club on Tuesday, December 19.

Rather than live streaming the mayoral announcement using his self-named councillor Facebook page, which has 722 likes, instead it was live streamed on a Facebook page named Jason O’Pray for Mayor, that had 12,000 likes.

The page was formerly called Sunshine Coast Events which had been created by Mr O’Pray in 2013 to promote events.

Several Sunshine Coast locals took to social media criticising the move, calling it out as “disgraceful” and “sneaky”.

The profile picture on the Jason O’Pray for Mayor Facebook page, that has since been deleted. Picture: Facebook

Mr O’Pray said he had created the Sunshine Coast Events page and that it had not been used for several years before being re-purposed.

“The IT team thought it was a good idea to reinstate a page we had that had been dormant for about three or four years, they just thought they would turn that over and I said do whatever you got to do,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s not even that many people on it, I know the numbers say this, but there’s not even that many people on it.”

He said once he realised what had happened, he requested for the Facebook page to be deleted.

A previous profile picture for the Sunshine Coast Events Facebook page. The name of the page had since been changed to Jason O’Pray for Mayor, before it was deleted.

“I didn’t agree with it and we pulled it straight away,” he said.

“The page was literally up for a couple of hours, there was a bit of kickback, so we pulled it down, it’s gone.

“Ultimately I’ll take it, but we had such an amazing day yesterday and to focus on that is a little disappointing.”

The page was deleted and Mr O’Pray is using his councillor page to promote his mayoral campaign.

In announcing his candidacy, Mr O’Pray joined the likes of television presenter and journalist Rosanna Natoli, well-known Montville local Wayne Parcell PSM, and previous mayoral contender Michael Burgess.