By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
CASEY’S councillor Rosalie Crestani has demanded that Mayor Mick Morland resign from his position after she was prevented from raising an amendment to stop the council promoting same-sex relationships.
But Cr Morland has slammed her demand and said it was a political stunt orchestrated days out from the state election, in which Cr Crestani is running as a Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP) candidate.
In an email circulated last Wednesday to journalists, fellow councillors and Casey staff, Cr Crestani called for the mayor to hand back his chain of office for denying her the right to speak during a “shambolic” council meeting which was hurriedly convened last month.
Two days earlier Cr Crestani had tried to raise a motion that sought to stop the council from issuing press releases and signs concerning sexual orientation or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.
She also sought to abolish the council’s LGBTI diversity training program on the grounds it was an example of discrimination against heterosexuals by omission.
Cr Crestani, who has vowed to take her case to the Equal Opportunity Commission, said Cr Morland had “spat upon democracy” and violated local law.
“It is the basic democratic right of an elected councillor to speak – and, under our local laws, to call for a division so that the minutes of the council meeting show how I, the representative of Four Oaks Ward of the City of Casey, have voted,” she said.
“Yet the mayor, in his chairmanship, saw fit to interrupt again and again and again and again to stop me calling for a division.
“I was not elected to be railroaded.”
Cr Crestani said Cr Morland must resign immediately.
“A mayor, in whose impartiality no-one can now have any confidence, has no option but to resign,” she said.
Cr Morland said he would not be resigning as mayor and expressed disappointment that Cr Crestani was “burning a lot of bridges behind her”.
“My immediate response is that she has no grounds for me to be dismissed – the only reason she’s talking about it is because she didn’t get her own way,” he said.
“I had a procedural motion and I have to work on a procedural motion, no-one can speak, that’s the way it is.
“There is no breach of local law, I had no leeway to move.
“She’s standing for State Parliament and this is all about publicity for her. Her time should be spent representing the Four Oaks Ward and ratepayers and not representing State Parliament.”
Amid the acrimony last week Cr Crestani’s fellow ward councillor Rafal Kaplon came out publicly as gay in a show of “strong community leadership.”
Meanwhile Lord Christopher Monckton, a well-known British conservative and controversial climate change sceptic, is throwing his support behind Cr Crestani’s attempt to challenge the council.
Her amendment proposed that the phrase “LGBTI community” in an alternative motion be replaced by a reference to people of all sexual orientations.
