Councillor accuses Muslim mayor of weaponising comments about pork

6 days ago 5

Liverpool’s Muslim mayor Ned Mannoun has been accused of “weaponising” social media comments about pork by his long-term political enemy, an inquiry has heard.

Lawyers for Mannoun grilled independent councillor Peter Ristevski over “highly offensive and racist” remarks about other elected officials which people had made on his Facebook page.

Liverpool councillor Peter Ristevski has three years left of his current term on council.

Ristevski told the inquiry into alleged dysfunction and maladministration at Liverpool City Council that members of the public could “say what they like, say what they like about me, it’s free speech”.

“Until I’m told otherwise, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with free speech in this country and I encourage it,” Ristevski said.

Ristevski’s use of social media has been scrutinised at the NSW Office of Local Government inquiry.

The inquiry has heard tensions between Mannoun, a Liberal, and Ristevski, a former Liberal who ran as an independent in last year’s local government poll, have been frustrating the council’s operations.

Ristevski was first elected to the council on the Liberal Party ticket in 2012. He had started to vote with Labor and independent councillors after his relationship with Mannoun soured in mid-2015.

The hearing has previously been told union members chanted “Put some pork on your fork” and held up a toy pig at a protest directed at Mannoun, amid false rumours of job losses at the council last April. In Islam, pork is regarded as unclean and its consumption is forbidden.

On Friday, the inquiry aired a social media post, published on Ristevski’s Facebook page, which encouraged residents to have their say on an $11 million proposal to build a mosque in Austral.

One person had commented, “I heard that place was a pig farm”, to which Ristevski responded “that would be very ironic”.

Another commenter wrote, “Ban the lot, we are a Christian country”, to which Ristevski had responded with “prayer hands” and Australian flag emojis, the inquiry heard.

Asked whether he was aware of previous public comments about pork and pigs, which Mannoun had found “very offensive” due to his religious background, Ristevski said: “He weaponised them.”

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Trish McDonald, SC, said: “Whether he’s weaponising them or not, it’s very evident, and you know that it’s evident, that the mayor finds those comments offensive.”

Ristevski said there was “no chance” his comment was linked to previous remarks about pigs or pork that had been directed at Mannoun by the public. He also rejected a suggestion he had been “joining in on the disparaging comments that have offended the mayor in the past” through his remark.

Pressed by Mannoun’s lawyer, Kate Richardson, SC, on whether he would leave others’ comments on his official councillor Facebook page “no matter how offensive or racist” they were, Ristevski said he did not have time to review the thousands of comments people left on his social media posts.

“This is a free country … [People] have said some things about me, vile things. I don’t care, let them say what they want.

“We are not a communist country. The way you are speaking, you are saying that we are like North Korea, we are not. People can say what they like.”

Richardson noted that Ristevski had aired “various views and opinions”, including the “weaponising of things or not” and suggested that, instead of cross-examining him on those matters, a “rival version of events” should instead be put to Mannoun, who is yet to give evidence in the inquiry.

Ristevski previously told the inquiry he had paid a team of people in Macedonia to craft and publish his social media posts. He said he had given them “free rein” to “post memes” and “be cheeky”, until he changed his approach to social media this year following numerous code of conduct complaints.

“It’s cheaper to have a team in Macedonia on €500 [$880] a month than it is to have someone in Australia on $5000. They ran my campaign team, and may I say they’re very effective,” he said.

Ristevski said there was “no university degree, no TAFE course” to be a local councillor, and that extra training on social media use and psychosocial incidents would be useful for elected officials.