By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
With just weeks to go before Melbourne’s local council elections, things are getting weird. So far the City of Melbourne has rather captured our attention, but let’s head to Moonee Valley council in the inner north-west, where councillor Samantha Byrne was suspended for two weeks for breaching standards of conduct, including for repeatedly using the phrase “playground killers”.
Yup readers this is true, we checked. The drama revolves around a lively budget meeting earlier this year and a $200,000 budget for acquiring playground equipment at the FJ Davies Reserve in Keilor East.
Moonee Valley councillor Samantha Byrne.
We’ll spare you the 33-page back and forth in Arbiter Louise Martin’s report – but in a nutshell the suspension centred around the “relentlessly disruptive” Byrne’s repeated use of “playground killer” to describe her colleagues who paused the funding.
It was clearly a heated meeting as this gem from the report makes clear: “the Mayor had to bang the gavel with such vigour that the head of the gavel flew off behind him”.
Regular readers will recall the case of James Conlan, who was due to be suspended from Merri-bek council for a month after using the word “shamefully” in a social media post about some of his fellow councillors. He resigned instead. Quite the naughty step, we remarked at the time.
Back at Moonee Valley, Rose Iser, the councillor who sent the matter to arbitration, urged CBD to take the incident seriously: “Bringing matters to arbitration is never option A … and for me, personally, no one should have to go to work worried about whether the behaviour of a colleague will provoke a panic attack.”
Byrne has given her apology and described the arbiter’s report as “a decision I acknowledge and respect”.
And the $200,000 Byrne was protesting about? It was pulled from the council budget and her actions to reinstate it were unsuccessful.
THE KING AND US
Sorrow in NSW racing but jubilation in Victorian racing when the itinerary for King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to Australia in October was released with a glaring omission – his attendance at the NSW race named in his honour.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Royal Ascot in June.Credit: Getty Images
Here at CBD towers we are personally invested in the royal tour, given it was during an interview with us last year that Tom Parker-Bowles, the son of the Queen, accidentally dropped the truth bomb that the royal tour was happening.
Instantly the Victoria Racing Club, which runs the Melbourne Cup, and Australian Turf Club, which runs Royal Randwick, were fighting for the chance to get the royal bums on seats. Then came the news that the Melbourne Cup, indeed the entire state of Victoria, was off the itinerary due to the King’s cancer recovery and a truncated tour. Now it is the same for NSW racing, which we imagine the Victorians are very happy about.
Racing NSW boss, NRL head honcho and unofficial premier of NSW Peter V’landys had been bullish about getting King Charles to attend the $5 million King Charles Stakes, named in his honour and part of Everest Day, October 19, which perfectly fitted the itinerary?
But the released tour talked of events on Sydney Harbour and Parliament House in Canberra, visits to the War Memorial, National Botanic Gardens and CSIRO, swapping cancer treatment stories with Australians of the Year Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer, plus that barbecue in Western Sydney. And Queen Camilla will visit a, er, library.
No mention of a day at the races. We put a call through to V’landys, but in an unprecedented historic event, he wasn’t at all keen on briefing the media.
But there are a few gaps in the tour schedule and the promise of some “surprises”, so some at Racing NSW remain quietly confident and righteous in their conviction that His Majesty wants to come to the Everest. And in Sydney, nobody can manifest quite like V’landys.
DREAMS DASHED
Recently, two 81-year-old men have both had their dreams of another four years in high office thwarted by concerned party insiders.
But while US President Joe Biden has been altogether supportive of the Democratic cause since passing the torch to Kamala Harris, Hornsby mayor Philip Ruddock, the former Howard government minister and Liberal elder statesman turned mayor in Sydney’s north, has gone a little less quietly.
Former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock.Credit: Getty
Since losing a preselection vote last month, Ruddock has pinned the blame for his ousting on property developers, and the area’s local federal member Julian Leeser, his erstwhile protege.
Relations between Ruddock and the local branches are currently tense, but the elder statesman, whom we hear is a teetotaller, donated a small portion of his wine cellar to the Liberals’ Hornsby Local Government Conference, apparently well before he was rolled.
Upper north shore local Kerrie Edwards won the booze, something of a pyrrhic victory considering she was expecting to be in the final stages of campaigning for a spot on Hornsby Shire Council by now ahead of Saturday’s poll. But because the Liberal Party inexplicably failed to get its forms in on time, she’s had to settle for a consolation prize – a selection of liquor from Ruddock’s personal cellar. Win some, lose some.
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