Mayor accuses Farrell of bullying, "gross abuse of power"

DERWENT Valley Mayor Michelle Dracoulis has sensationally accused Derwent MLC and Legislative Council President Craig Farrell (pictured above) of bullying and a "gross abuse of power."

Writing on social media, the Mayor said she considered Mr Farrell's actions “a gross abuse of power.” She added: “I don’t respect Mr Farrell for it, and I will no longer wear it in silence.”

Mayor Dracoulis says she’s being personally attacked by Mr Farrell, who’s calling her (and the previous Mayor) disparaging names in public forums and telling the community he’s going to “get her Council sacked.”

The Mayor says the behaviour is bullying, and needs to stop.

“They harm me, my council and my family. They are designed to denigrate and cause damage. This needs to stop today.”

On Monday this week, Mr Farrell told the Derwent Valley Gazette he would not be responding to the Mayor, “pending legal advice.”

It’s understood relations soured soon after her election in 2022, their differing issues relating to support for the arts, the development of Willow Court, and later, the Derwent Valley Railway, where the members voted for Cr Dracoulis to replace Mr Farrell as chair.

For this year’s March election, Michelle Dracoulis stood for the Labor Party at the same time as – and in competition with – Mr Farrell’s son Casey. She withdrew as a candidate a week later, saying she preferred to focus on her mayoral role.

It was later claimed that Mr Farrrell junior had been given New Norfolk as his campaign area under the Labor Party's "zonal" approach to the campaign - ahead of Mayor Dracoulis.

Mayor Dracoulis also stated that she had ceased attending local Labor Party branch meetings "due to the toxic culture, including the use of nasty names for currently sitting Labor members, and an onslaught of misogynistic observations about other women in power in Tasmania."

In the small, tightly knit Derwent Valley community, the personal and professional are often intertwined, and issues made worse by the close links between Council, its ratepayers and interest groups. 

Both Mr Farrell and Mayor Dracoulis live in New Norfolk.

A recent example concerns TYGA FM, of which Mr Farrell is president and Council owns the building housing the radio station. Council in past weeks has halted interior demolition because the radio station failed to get necessary building approvals.

Separately, Mr Farrell has provided a statutory declaration about claims that the Mayor disclosed, at a Labor function, information regarding the private business affairs of the New Norfolk Distillery.

(The Distillery is now before the Supreme Court after failing to pay four years’ rent, over $100,000, for DV Council buildings it leased.) 

In a recent council meeting, the Distillery owners attempted to use the Farrell affidavit, whatever its content, as evidence of wrong-doing by the Mayor.

MAYOR CALLS OUT NEW NORFOLK NEWS

Mayor Dracoulis also used her social media posting to call out the New Norfolk News, a newspaper published every two weeks.

The Friday before last, the editor Damien Bester shocked sports and political figures at the groundbreaking of the new change-rooms at Boyer Oval. Mr Bester disinvited the Mayor, who was present for the event, from being included in a photograph for his newspaper.

It is a media convention that the mayor, the representative officer of the council funding the work, is included in any ribbon-cutting photograph. Instead Mayor Dracoulis was told she was not wanted in that newspaper’s photograph.   

This was, she posted, the culmination of a succession of “sometimes ignorant, and on occasion downright venomous” behaviours from the newspaper’s editor.   

The Derwent Valley Gazette heard from multiple other attendees, which included AFL Tasmania representatives, that they were shocked by the hostility towards the mayor. 

Michelle Dracoulis labelled Mr Bester’s actions as a further example of bullying, and vowed to stand up to it.