Who were the bullies among Geelong’s 13 councillors?
That question was not fully answered in the Commission of Inquiry report but some clues were revealed during the sacking saga this week.
The report said a councillor used social media to retweet a description of a local citizen as a ‘Greek property parasite’.
“This egregious, racist comment undermined council’s reputation and community harmony,” the report said.
The comment was retweeted by Cr Jan Farrell.
Liberal MP for South Barwon Andrew Katos used parliamentary privilege to name Cr Andy Richards as one of the bullies.
Mr Katos claimed that Labor had given Cr Richards a role of undermining both directly elected mayors and creating a dysfunctional council.
But Cr Richards, Labor’s losing candidate for South Barwon in 2014, said Mr Katos lost all credibility when he used parliamentary privilege in a poor attempt to attack him.
“Mr Katos’s claims about Keith Fagg are rubbish and his claims that I am doing the Labor party’s bidding are equally false.”
But Cr Richards admitted “deep-seated, long-term problems with Geelong council from the leadership down”.
He said he supported the move to sack the council because it had been unable to fix the issues in a timely way.
Cr Darryn Lyons earlier told the Indy that the commissioners had singled him out for political reasons.
“Why was there nothing in the report about the downfall of Keith Fagg?” Cr Lyons asked.
“Why was all the focus on me? There were other councillors who behaved worse than I did but they were not named even though we know who they are.”
