Darcy Byrne: Inner West mayor in code of conduct complaint
A Sydney mayor “humiliated” a fellow councillor who was forced to apologise to him last year, breaching his council’s policy and sparking a code of conduct probe that was secretly debated in closed session this week.
Inner West
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The Labor mayor of Sydney’s Inner West Council is in hot water after he made “humiliating” social media comments about a fellow councillor, an internal code of conduct investigation has found.
Prolific Facebook and Twitter user Mayor Darcy Byrne has been found to have breached his own council’s regulations over a post in which he mocked a colleague who was forced to publicly apologise to him.
The social media stoush all started with a Facebook post referencing the mayor by councillor Pauline Lockie in 2018, which she was later ordered to apologise for.
It is understood the post in which Cr Lockie later apologised in 2019 came after Cr Byrne issued a letter from his solicitor.
“As a basic rule in life, don’t defame people for personal advancement. It’s just bad manners,” Cr Byrne wrote on May 19 last year referencing Ms Lockie’s apology.
Council’s internal investigation has found the mayor breached its social media policy five times in his apparent taunt by “aligning the motives of personal advancement to (Cr Lockie) and accusing her of being unprofessional, disrespectful and having bad manners.”
Its report also detailed how mayor Byrne’s post brought the council and Cr Lockie into disrepute and a reasonable person would consider he humiliated the independent councillor.
It also found that the mayor breached council’s social media policy by then not deleting the post or subsequent comment that breached the policy, which is still public at the time of writing.
Details of the incident can be revealed for the first time after the matter was secretly debated in a closed session of council this week.
The mayor will not face any sanctions over the code of conduct complaint as it was not deemed to be serious enough to warrant a misconduct finding.
However, the report did recommend council revise its social media policy so that it acts “more as a guideline”.
Mayor Darcy Byrne issued a statement but did not respond to a series of questions.
“Myself and seven other councillors were defamed, as has been admitted by councillor Lockie,” he said.
“I sought an apology and withdrawal of the defamatory comments. That apology and withdrawal was made last year. The matter is concluded.”