‘Shut the fuck up’: councillors’ poetry blow-up

Crikey has had some very serious differences with Prue MacSween over the years — but we have to give credit where it’s due.

The broadcaster, accidental porn-tagger and spinner can put together a helluva press release. Her company, Verve Communications, has put out a call on behalf of Cumberland Councillors Steve Christou and Paul Garrard asking NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns to sack Labor Councillor Mohamad Hussein, alleging abusive behaviour in a recent meeting.

Garrard and Christou say things all went a bit mid-’90s Oasis at the council’s annual budget weekend planning session at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Windsor on Saturday.

Garrard at some point reportedly decided to recite Banjo Paterson’s The Man from Ironbark to the table. He alleges Hussein told him several times to “Shut the fuck up” and “Sit the fuck down”. (The same thing happens to me every time I try to recite poetry, to be fair.) According to the letter, Hussein was as much “Ironbite” as “Ironbark”, offering Christou and Garrard the chance to settle things outside. Crikey understands there is no security footage of the alleged incident, but there were several witnesses.

Hussein didn’t respond to Crikey‘s request for comment by deadline, but his lawyer has said the councillor “denied the allegations”.

This is not the first time Cumberland City Council has made the news. Christou eminently qualifies as a “colourful character”. He was elected mayor in 2019 and used his acceptance speech to quit the Labor Party for “going too much to the left, to the Greens”. In August 2021, after the state government tightened COVID restrictions, Christou tweeted: “Welcome to Nazi Germany.” He apologised “if anyone was offended“.

And if matters had come to blows with Hussein, we at least know Christou knows how to take a punch — on polling day in December 2021 he was involved in a physical altercation with a 29-year-old man who was then charged with common assault.