Parramatta councillor Ben Barrak expelled from council for seventh time
A rebel councillor has been kicked out of council chambers for the seventh time this year after refusing to apologise for insulting the mayor.
Parramatta
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Rebel councillor Benjamin Barrak has been kicked out of council chambers for the seventh time this year after refusing to apologise for insulting the mayor.
Parramatta Lord Mayor Andrew Wilson said he had “no choice” but to expel Cr Barrak from the meeting after he claimed an apology would be “irrational”, “illogical” and “unlawful”.
Cr Barrak was asked to apologise for his behaviour at the February 20 meeting where he called Cr Wilson a “clown” and abruptly left with confidential papers in relation to the sacking of CEO Mark Stapleton.
“I am not apologising,” Cr Barrak told the mayor.
“You’re asking me to apologise for things the court has said you cannot because it’s unlawful. What part of that don’t you understand Lord Mayor?”
Cr Barrak told Cr Wilson to “go ahead and do it” after he was threatened with expulsion.
“You can throw me out now until the end of term,” he said.
Cr Wilson said “I cannot believe this” after his motion to expel Cr Barrack was successful.
He then said “Goodbye, Cr Barrak” before suspending the meeting for five minutes.
After the meeting resumed, Cr Wilson said Cr Barrak had made it “impossible, by calling me names, to conduct a meeting.”
“He makes it so enormously difficult,” he said.
“I would suggest Cr Barrak rethinks his position.”
Cr Barrak maintains the council acted unlawfully by booting him from the past seven meetings over his refusal to say sorry over his behaviour at the February 20 meeting.
But earlier today Cr Barrak lost a case against the council in the Land and Environment Court where he claimed he was being unfairly treated.
Justice Tim Moore ordered Cr Barrak to pay the council’s legal fees after dismissing his case in which he requested the council be banned from again asking him for an apology.
Justice Moore found while Cr Barrak’s expulsion on February 20 was invalid because “the council had not passed the necessary prerequisite empowering resolution required by the Local Government Act”, his five subsequent expulsions at meetings in March and April were within the council’s powers.
“Each subsequent expulsion of Councillor Barrak from a council meeting up to and including the council meeting of 8 April 2019, was within power and, consistent with authority, appropriate,” Justice Moore wrote.
Cr Barrak said he would be conferring with his barrister and appealing the judgement.
He called the events an “expected part of politics”.
“It’s all political. You expect this kind of argy bargy in politics, so it is quite normal.”