Politics and personal attacks in Byron’s election campaign

The Byron Shire Council election campaign in 2024 has triggered a series of personal attacks from candidates and former councillors as the fall-out from the incumbent mayor’s criminal charges continues.

Outgoing Independent Byron Shire Councillor Cate Coorey has spoken publicly of her disgust at personal comments made about two 2024 mayoral candidates in The Echo, one by an incumbent and the other by a former councillor.

Perhaps ironically, former Cr Coorey said she supposed she was ‘being a bit nasty’ on her ‘way out’, but wanted to take the chance of a parting interview on Bay FM’s Community Newsroom last week to address published comments from former Labor Councillor Jan Hackett and incumbent Councillor Mark Swivel, who recently joined the Labor party after quitting the incumbent mayor’s Byron Independents team.

‘Ego-driven grandstander’, says former Labor councillor of Greens mayoral candidate

‘I just was really shocked that Jan wrote that,’ Ms Coorey said of a letter to the editor from Ms Hackett in The Echo last week, ‘I thought it was a really personal and nasty thing to do’.

The letter aired Ms Hackett’s grievances from her time working alongside incumbent Greens Cr Sarah Ndiaye, who is competing against Labor’s Asren Pugh in the 2024 mayoral race in her first mayoral campaign.

‘She basically said that Sarah was impossible to work with, was egotistical and bullying,’ Ms Coorey said, ‘that was the gist of it’.

Ms Hackett’s exact words with respect to Ms Ndiaye were as follows:

‘I earnestly, and I repeat earnestly, tried to work with Sarah on Council for five years.

‘Others may have a different opinion but after this experience I have to say that I found her to be at the top of my list of non-collaborative, ego-driven grandstanders I have had the misfortune to engage with – and I’ve been on countless committees and forums in my career as a senior public educator.’

To date, she is the first former councillor to publicly express vitriol against the incumbent councillor elected twice by her peers in council chambers to be deputy mayor.

Outgoing Independent Councillor Alan Hunter, who has consistently described himself as conservative and a member of The Nationals, recently told Bay FM listeners he had positive collaborations and debates across the political spectrum in the council, including with Cr Ndiaye.

Outgoing Independent defends only woman running for Byron mayor

Ms Coorey said while she considered herself and incumbent Cr Ndiaye to be friends, the pair had ‘clashed’ in council chambers, ‘as you do’.

She was also ‘fond’ of Ms Hackett, Ms Coorey said.

‘But as a member of the Labor Party, I feel she’s got an agenda there,’ she said of Ms Hackett’s attacks on the 2024 Greens mayoral candidate.

Ms Coorey said with the incumbent mayor ‘out of the picture,’ Labor mayoral candidate Asren Pugh probably had a better chance of being mayor.

The incumbent mayor is running again for the top council position, as well as for ordinary council seats for a refreshed group called Byron Independents, but his election campaign is marred by domestic violence charges that aren’t due to be heard in court until March next year.

Michael Lyon has repeatedly said he is determined to clear his name and that his wife wishes for the charges to be dropped but the public won’t know exactly what happened on the night of 1 August until the case is heard.

In the meantime, two of his former election teammates have left him in favour of other running groups and the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce declined to invite him to its Meet the Candidates event scheduled for this afternoon, although his group is to still be represented.

Mr Lyon’s fall-out means that while he is still in the mayoral race, interest in an alternative appears to have increased, with Independent David Warth announcing his candidacy in the final hours leading up to nomination deadline.

Both Labor and The Greens increased their group numbers in the last week before registration cut-off, although The Greens said their addition of a fifth member was decided prior to news of Mr Lyon’s charges.

Labor changed their Byron ticket line-up, partly to include incumbent Cr Swivel, who received the number three spot – the same spot he was to have had on the Byron Independents ticket.

The mayor’s power of three

When Mr Lyon won his mayoral title towards the end of 2021, voter support was strong enough to earn his group three seats on the council, a mathematical reality widely expected to repeat for the 2024 mayor.

Ms Coorey characterised the 2024 mayoral campaign as essentially a competition between Labor and The Greens, with Mr Pugh ‘against Sarah’.

‘Saying something like that damages Sarah’s reputation’ she said of Ms Hackett’s letter.

‘I was really sorry to see that from her, and I’m really offended on Sarah’s behalf, because nobody else had that experience with Sarah,’ Ms Coorey said.

‘I think it’s getting nasty.’

Swivel accused of re-traumatising alleged DV victim

Ms Coorey then turned attention to incumbent Cr Swivel, who has made several comments on social media, in mainstream media and to local independent media about the incumbent mayor.

The practising lawyer’s comments have most recently focused on information he says he is privy to concerning Mr Lyon’s case, last week telling The Echo the incumbent mayor was lying (see print edition).

Mr Lyon said he couldn’t comment on matters before the court.

Ms Coorey again said she was shocked.

‘Some of this is party politicking,’ she said, ‘but you know, back in June, Cr Swivel said that there was no place for parties in local government’.

Mr Swivel has addressed his changed view, responding to Ms Coorey in a social media comment earlier this month that ‘ideally’ there would be no parties in local councils, but that ‘in a crisis’ he ‘made a decision to run with Asren and his team’.

Speaking about the same crisis, Ms Coorey said she was horrified Mr Swivel had posted about Mr Lyon’s charges on social media.

‘It’s no one else’s business, and it’s before the courts, and we have a presumption of innocence in this country,’ Ms Coorey said.

‘I’m not supporting a position on it, it’s just it’s not our place to talk about it,’ she continued.

‘Cr Swivel put it out there first, named the complainant,’ Ms Coorey said, ‘which, again, is re-traumatising a victim’.

‘As a lawyer, he ought to know better than that.’

‘Lack-lustre,’ says Coorey of Swivel’s council performance

Ms Coorey said she’d deduced Cr Swivel’s motivation for speaking out as ‘self-interest’ owing to Labor’s perceived improved chances of winning more seats on the council.

Mr Swivel was ‘impugning Michael,’ she said, and suggesting the domestic violence complainant should be speaking when the matter was still before the courts.

‘As a lawyer, he knows that people can’t do this, so those people who have to be silenced by the process are being verballed by him,’ she said.

‘And of course, if Asren becomes mayor, Cr Swivel gets bumped up the list and gets back on council and my question is, why?’

Ms Coorey then attacked Mr Swivel’s performance as a councillor, describing him as ‘lacklustre’ in his first and only term served so far.

‘He did very little and took credit for the Feros win,’ she said, referring to Byron Bay’s aged care village, ‘for which he was being paid as a solicitor’.

‘He wasn’t actually even able to vote on it in council because it was a conflict of interest for him because they were his clients,’ Ms Coorey said.

‘So forgive me, I am going to be emotional, and I don’t care because I’m leaving, but that is my take on it,’ Ms Coorey said.

‘Some good people are damaged by this in a way that should not be happening,’ she said, ‘and not least the complainant in this DV case, who is constantly being re-traumatised by this being talked about, and it being used as a as a tool in this campaign, and it’s disgusting.’

* Mia Armitage is Bay FM Community Newsroom EP, you can hear the full interview with outgoing Cr Coorey here.