By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Of all the deeply cooked local councils around Sydney, Liverpool takes the cake.
The council is facing an inquiry from the NSW Office of Local Government, which is scrutinising councillors’ conduct, property purchases and handling of finances. CBD has been waiting with our popcorn since the inquiry was announced by Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig last year after serious allegations of maladministration.
Former Liverpool Council chief executive John Ajaka had a falling-out with mayor Ned Mannoun.Credit: Edwina Pickles
So far, the hearings have well and truly delivered. On the inquiry’s opening day, counsel assisting Trish McDonald, SC, said that a forever feud between Liverpool’s Liberal mayor Ned Mannoun and his bitter rival, Peter Ristevski, had been frustrating the council’s operation.
Regular CBD readers would recall an altercation between the pair during last year’s local government elections, which involved Ristevski accusing Mannoun of being stinky and wearing an Armani suit (that’s a bad thing?). Separately, Mannoun has brought a failed defamation suit against Ristevski.
This week, attention has turned to another of Mannoun’s friendship break-ups – a falling-out with former Liberal John Ajaka, the 10th Liverpool Council chief executive in eight years, who was ousted by the mayor last year.
This week’s hearings revealed Mannoun had told Ajaka to fire “useless” bathroom cleaners and requested Labor councillors be airbrushed out of photographs posted on Liverpool’s social media account.
Ajaka’s ousting last year won him support across the political spectrum, with members of the United Services Union staging a protest, and conservative shock-jock Ray Hadley issuing a full-throated on-air defence of the former Liberal politician.
Now, Ajaka is being helped by another figure from the opposite side of the political aisle. Adam Searle, formerly NSW Labor’s leader in the upper house, is acting as his barrister during the inquiry.
Searle is no stranger to intra-party warfare. He was effectively pushed out of a winnable spot on Labor’s upper house ticket ahead of the 2023 state election as then-opposition leader Chris Minns looked to inject fresh blood into his team.
Former Labor frontbencher Adam Searle is acting for John Ajaka.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Searle has since returned to his pre-politics job as a barrister, and last year popped up in the Northern Territory helping a community group challenge energy giant Tamboran Resources’ Beetaloo basin gas mega-project.
Talk about having a broad practice.
Can’t let it go
The election night in May was notable for the denial exhibited by the Greens regarding its wipeout.
As this website reported at the time, from its party in Melbourne’s concrete ghetto of Docklands: “The activists who’d poured their hearts into doorknocking and handing out fliers and how-to-vote cards were mingling and dancing, blissfully unaware of the disaster unfolding before them.”
Adam Bandt … gone, but not forgotten.Credit: Paul Jeffers
Regular readers will know the Greens had hopes of winning nine lower house seats but history records they were left with just one, and the wipeout engulfed the party host, leader Adam Bandt, who lost his seat of Melbourne after five elections and 15 years.
The party’s denial then was understandable (not even Labor thought its candidate Sarah Witty would win Melbourne). But being in denial now? That’s a different story.
CBD was first to bring you the news Bandt had moved on and was gigging in the legal department of the Labor-aligned United Firefighters Union (UFU), where an old mate and client Peter Marshall presides as secretary.
However, Bandt’s old party seems stuck in the past. Click on the Greens website to check out which MPs have been granted which portfolio, and the first thing you come to is a giant online banner photograph of the now very former dear leader. A clear case of Can’t. Let. Go.
It’s been a banner week for the Greens, meanwhile, engulfed by accusations from co-founder Drew Hutton that the party had become “authoritarian, aggressive and unlikeable” after he was purged following a refusal to delete social media posts deemed “transphobic” by some of the comrades in charge.
Meanwhile, deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi was disciplined for holding up a sign in the Senate condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza during Governor-General Sam Mostyn’s address to the chamber.
It’s weeks like this when Bandt will miss the Greens most.
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