The saga of the contentious giving of a local Australia Day award to serving Randwick City Councillor Charles Matthews has taken an aggressive new turn.
The No Parking Meters Party Councillor has lodged an official complaint that critical comments made on streetcorner.com.au by fellow Councillor Murray Matson breach the Council's Code of Conduct.
Readers will be aware that Matson has disagreed that the politically ambitions Matthews should have been given such a prestigious recognition - a recognition that is blocked for state or federal politicians.
The comments have taken the gloss off the winning of the award for the No Parking Meters Party just as Cr Matthews is ramping up its’ profile to contest the coming state election.
Cr Matson reports that the Council’s General Manager was obliged to formerly call him in for a meeting last Friday to answer Cr Matthews' complaint.
Cr Matson rejected any contravention of the code of conduct by himself and has since labelled the complaint "... a heavy handed attempt by Cr Matthews to get me to shut up about how inappropriate his award was."
Cr Matson elaborated afterwards,
"There is no clause in the Council's Code of Conduct that says one Councillor can't go on a community news web site and criticise another Councillor for having the vanity to covert a local Australia Day award.
Politicians who covert awards can't be allowed to call foul when they don't actually come with the expected level of community prestige."
I stand by what I said. It was inappropriate of the Council to give an award intended for local residents to a serving local politician with political ambitions.
It became doubly inappropriate when Cr Matthew stayed and participated in the meeting while the committee debated and voted on the matter.
Any other Councillor would have had the good taste to refuse the nomination - let alone one who was actually the chair of that very committee as Cr Matthews currently is."