Burnie City Council apologises to Trent Aitken for Facebook post targeted towards him

A council general manager says they “got it wrong” after a social media post intended to be “tongue in cheek” was poorly received.

Burnie councillor Trent Aitken. Picture: Supplied.

The Burnie City Council has been forced to apologise over a post on its social media page.

Burnie councillor Trent Aitken claimed he was “not woke enough for council workshops”.

The comments were made after he was kicked out of two council meetings in three months.

On Tuesday, the Burnie City Council posted on its Facebook page with information about its upcoming workshops.

In the post, the line “a woke workshop indeed” was included.

The post was deleted the next day, and Burnie City Council general manager Simon Overland issued a public apology.

“Upon reflection, I know that I got this wrong,” Mr Overland said.

Burnie City Council general manager Simon Overland. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

“I used the word ‘Woke’ on the post about the councillor workshop yesterday in response to a comment one of the councillors made in a recent article posted in the Advocate.

“This post was intended to be ‘tongue in cheek’ but I take on board the criticism that this has drawn and I accept it was the wrong thing to do.

“Our culture is to be transparent, respectful and kind to our entire community, we know this post didn’t align with that and has missed the mark.”

Mr Aitken said he accepted the apology but was disappointed with the post.

“I literally stated not even a week ago how horrible it was down at the council, and then two days after, they turned around and did the post,” the councillor said.

“It’s a prime example of what’s going on down there: being offended for the sake of being offended and just trying their absolute best to make my life as miserable as possible.”

He said all the council drama was beginning to affect him.

“It has a massive mental toll because you lose trust in councillors, and you lose your confidence in representing your people,” he said.

“You can’t really take information at face value when you’ve always got to wonder whether there’s a motive behind what you’re getting told or whether someone else has another plan on what you’re getting told, or even if I say what I want to say, will I get in trouble?

“It’s not helping Burnie.

“Burnie has issues, and instead of addressing it, every time I open my mouth, I get told to shut up, be told it’s not appropriate or be told ‘you can’t say this, you can’t do that, we don’t have this problem’.”