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A toxic south-west Sydney council byelection has descended into chaos after police were called to a polling booth amid a screaming match between a councillor and a candidate.
The altercation came a day after Liverpool City Council’s Liberal mayor accidentally published the home address of the area’s Labor state MP in a Facebook video criticising circumstances which led to the south ward byelection, triggered by the resignation of deputy mayor Betty Green in January.
Liverpool Liberal councillor Richard Ammoun and independent byelection candidate Jamal Daoud were seen shouting at each other at pre-poll at Casula Community Centre on Thursday afternoon.
Daoud, who ran as an independent for the seat of Werriwa in last year’s federal election, claimed he was called a liar by Ammoun for alleging there was corruption at the council, and that a Liberal supporter said in Arabic “your father is a son of a bitch”.
An electoral worker inside then called NSW Police, Daoud and other witnesses confirmed.
“I needed at that time to say a few bad words about him,” Daoud told the Herald on Thursday afternoon. “Not bad, but I said ‘Shut your mouth’, or something like that. You can’t talk about my father like this, especially [because] he is a dead person now.”
Ammoun said Daoud was lying about there being corruption at the council.
“He was just saying things that were untrue to constituents, I tried to correct him,” Ammoun said. “He started calling me names in his native language. I remained calm, even while the police were there.”
Daoud is now wearing a bodycam for the final few days of the campaign.
A NSW Police spokesperson said they were called regarding a civil matter and left without incident.
State MP’s address posted online
The incident is the latest escalation in a dramatic 24 hours ahead of Saturday’s vote, which will return about 82,000 of the council’s residents to the polls.
On Wednesday night, Liberal mayor Ned Mannoun posted an extraordinary 3-minute and 50-second video to Facebook of him sitting in front of a corkboard containing the faces of his political rivals connected by pins and a piece of string, discussing “the cold, hard truth” about the council.
For about three seconds, as Mannoun was talking about the United Services Union’s donations to Labor, a photo appeared on-screen of an election donation disclosure form which revealed the unredacted home addresses of Liverpool’s state Labor MP Charishma Kaliyanda and Green.
Kaliyanda, a former Liverpool councillor, said it was “doxxing”.
“I’m getting advice about what my options are,” she said. “Does this mean that I need to move house? What does this mean in terms of safety and security measures that I need to put in place for myself and my family?”
Mannoun stopped short of apologising for sharing the data in the video but said: “I’m sorry that a publicly available document was published.”
The people whose addresses were shared weren’t mentioned in the video, and the size of the clipping was barely legible, Mannoun said. On Thursday morning, he removed the video and re-uploaded it with the information blurred.
Mannoun said he was planning to publish more social media content about the saga. “Wait for my next video,” he said.
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Anthony Segaert is the Parramatta bureau chief at The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously an urban affairs reporter.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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