Western Sydney mayor Councillor Steve Christou has launched defamation proceedings against the organiser of an online petition calling for his removal as the Mayor of Cumberland (Western Sydney) for allegedly making offensive statements against Muslim and Asian communities.
A member of the Labor Party until 2019, Cr Christou became mayor of Cumberland City Council with support of Liberal and independent councillors two years ago. He told Neos Kosmos that he was not a racist and that no member of the of Cumberland’s city council condoned racism.
“Over 62 per cent of Cumberland do not speak English as their first language and roughly the same percentage were not born in Australia. I, myself, am the son of Greek Cypriot refugees,” Cr Christou said.
The online petition drawn by Rosh Veera, followed in the wake of a council decision not to endorse the “Racism not Welcome” campaign headed by former Australian soccer star Craig Foster. The mayor used his casting vote to tip the decision against endorsement of the campaign and a proposal to install Racism Not Welcome street signs throughout the municipality. The failed motion had been introduced by Labor Councillors Kun Huang and Suman Saha.
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Cr Christou said the motion had been rejected because it did not contain the necessary specifics as to how the campaign would be introduced, how many signs would be put up or what the cost of the exercise would be.
“One of the councillors proposed a figure of $5,000 to put up the signs but that would not have been enough to cover the cost of even two signs,” Cr Christou said. “No outline or resource implications was provided. The council general manager tried to help them present the proposal, but they refused that help.”
“It was pure political grandstanding as they did not even consult with councillors outside of the Labor party before the meeting. If the movers of the motion were genuine, they would have approached the other councillors to find out how to make it work.”
He said the council was the fifth largest in New South Wales and was one of just a few councils that had not applied for a rates’ increase this year because it had been careful with how to spend its budget.
Cr Christou added that the proposal as it was presented would have been costly to the council. He added that two recent police reports indicated that there had been no racism within Cumberland.
He said that Ms Veera, who drew up the petition entitled: “Help me remove the racist Mayor of Cumberland, Sydney”, had been served with a legal letter and he would see where that would lead.
The petition had 10,995 signatures by Wednesday afternoon. In calling for his removal on the petition website, Ms Veera alleges that Cr Christou had “publicly made negative statements towards the Muslim and Asian communities of Cumberland, and these statements have been offensive and a deliberate attempt to exclude them from the council.
Cr Christou said many of the signatures to the petition were from outside the council area.
“The feedback that I have received is very supportive and that includes Muslims within the community because my intentions are clear, and these are to serve all the people of Cumberland.”
Ms Veera alleged that on 19 January, the mayor had described the rejection of an application for a mosque development “as a fantastic win.”
Cr Christou said the mosque development had been rejected because it was a bad development that had generated many complaints particularly over traffic issues.
Ms Veera’s online document further alleges that Cr Christou had complained on 2GB Radio that “he could not get a bacon egg roll at a Bankstown carnival and implied that it’s un-Australian”.
Cr Christou said the incident had been videod and edited so that he appeared to be making disparaging comments and that he spoken badly to two women who were serving at the canteen – an incident that he said did not occur.
Ms Veera also alleged in the petition document: “Further the mayor has privatised children’s services. He has no regard to the impact that has made on families and workers.”
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Cr Christou pointed that no such privatisation had taken place and that 17 childcare centres were all on council land.
“I am supported by my community who see the hard work that I do,” said Cr Christou.
Meanwhile the Settlement Services International (SSI) noted that the timing of Cumberland’s rejection of the “Racism Not Welcome Here” proposal had coincided with Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan’s proposal for a new anti-racism framework that would create a national, standardized approach to address racist attitudes in the Australian community.
The CEO of SSI, Violet Roumeliotis said the proposed framework met a pressing community need – “which made it doubly disappointing to see locally-driven initiatives such as the Cumberland Council proposal shut down.
While Ms Roumeliotis could not be reached yesterday and would not be available for comment this week, an SSI spokesman said: “SSI’s interest isn’t in condemning the mayor or implying he’s a racist.
“We are expressing our support for a national anti-racism strategy and, in that context, observing how it is unhelpful for a council to be voting down a well-respected community anti-racism measure. If the mayor is saying he could support the signage campaign if it was properly presented, we would commend that.
“We urge him to revisit the proposal and implement it as soon as it is practical.”
