By Michael Newhouse
LAST week’s Brimbank City Council meeting descended into a factional shouting match, as mayor Margaret Giudice struggled to keep control of councillors and the public gallery during parts of last Tuesday’s fiery meeting.
It was a return to the heated council meetings the public has grown used to over the past couple of years.
Councillors spent the first hour of the three-and-a-half hour meeting arguing over emails and letters of correspondence, most of which related to the heritage overlay and the St Albans Uniting Church.
Early in the evening a procedural fight broke out over a motion put by Cr Marilyn Zukalski requesting a report into a local group’s call for more parks funding.
When Cr Giudice said she had already requested a report into the correspondence, a debate followed on whether the report would be publicly brought before council at the next meeting, or whether it would be dealt with privately by councillors.
During the debate, people in the public gallery taunted former mayor Natalie Suleyman, yelling “shut up, you’re not mayor any more”, to which Cr Suleyman at one point replied “why don’t you shut up”, and at another told members to “stop screaming”.
“This is farcical this evening and it’s got to stop,” Cr Miles Dymott said at one point in the debate.
Cr Giudice strained to keep control, and at one point was forced to officially caution Cr Suleyman and Cr Anthony Abate to regain some control of the debate and the meeting.
It set the scene for the rest of the evening, with members of Cr Suleyman’s faction – Crs Abate, Ken Capar, Marilyn Zukalski and Jenny Barboza – regularly facing off against the other five councillors, and the mayor, mostly over the contentious heritage overlay.
Members and supporters of the St Albans Uniting Church were well represented in the public gallery, holding signs calling for the planned heritage overlay on the church to be scrapped, and cheering during the debate.
Cr Kathryn Eriksson’s husband, former federal Labor MP Andrew Theophanous, came close to being ejected from the meeting when he rose to his feet in the gallery interject towards the end of the meeting.
By the time the meeting came to a close, at 10.30pm, most of the gallery had left, and those still there were left shaking their head at the evening’s partisan political grandstanding.
Outside the meeting, Cr Abate, who was one of the most vocal councillors over the course of the meeting, said he was proud of his group’s performance.
“I thought we were tenacious,” Cr Abate said.
