A Western Sydney council sparked widespread controversy and condemnation after voting to place a blanket ban on same-sex parenting books from local libraries.
The Cumberland City ban – proposed by the former mayor and current councillor Steve Christou – was to be imposed on its eight council-run libraries, but was reversed just two weeks later.
During the meeting in which the ban was passed, Christou brandished a book he alleged had received “really disturbing” constituent complaints, saying parents were “distraught” to see Same-Sex Parents by Holly Duhig on the shelf.
Christou is a member of the Our Local Community party, along with two of the five other councillors who initially supported the ban.
Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Our Local Community and where does the party come from?
Our Local Community was created by Paul Garrard, a former Labor councillor on Parramatta council. Garrard quit the Labor party in 2004 after he was not preselected to run for the state seat of Granville. He returned to the council in 2012 after forming his own party, the Woodville Independents. A year later, he started Our Local Community.
Garrard served six terms as Parramatta’s lord mayor before becoming a councillor on Cumberland City council when it was created in 2016 and absorbed parts of several councils in the area, including the ward he had represented in Parramatta.
The party has 10 representatives on three Sydney councils – Parramatta, Cumberland and Canada Bay.
Who is in it and how big is it?
OLC is led by Garrard. He, Christou and Helen Hughes all represent the party on Cumberland council.
Garrard’s daughter, Michelle Garrard, represents the party on Parramatta council. Donna Wang, Henry Green and Dan Siviero also represent OLC in Parramatta. Joseph Cordaro and Carmela Ruggeri represent OLC on Canada Bay council.
To be registered as a party, at least 100 people need to be members.
According to documents lodged with the state’s electoral commission, membership is free for OLC’s first 100 members.
Paul Garrard said the party had about 450 members. Most of the councillors who spoke with the Guardian had never attended a party meeting, nor had they met any members outside their councils.
What does the party stand for?
According to the OLC charter, the party’s “endeavour” is to “provide an active voice in addressing various social issues, which may be relevant to the wider community, as well as expressing a view that OLC does not support politics in local government and that OLC shall hold views which are independent of the major political parties”.
Paul Garrard describes the party as “centre-right”. Christou describes it as “right-wing conservative”. A longtime Labor party member before he jumped to OLC in 2019, Christou is known for his outspoken views.
Christou handed out how-to-vote cards for the One Nation candidate in Parramatta at the 2023 NSW state election. Garrard said the party was not involved with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation “in any fashion or form” but OLC did not “tie our members’ hands”.
“If people wish to support a friend who is a candidate at another election, they’re entitled to do that,” he said.
Henry Green, who is in his first term as an OLC councillor on the Parramatta council and intends to run again with the party later this year, told the Guardian that the party was “community-minded”. He said it was about delivering what the community wanted – fixing roads and staying out of the political mess.
“When you’re in council, you see too many people being political. We want to cut red tape – get things done.”
A party member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said many people ran under the banner of OLC “to not be Liberal or Labor” and to reduce the amount of paperwork they needed to do as candidates.
Another member who spoke on the same condition said the party did not operate like other more mainstream options and did not hold party meetings as far as they knew from their three years of membership.
“We’re not hanging out together and having meetings,” they said.
A party member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they were attracted to the OLC for the way it put the charter of local government at the heart of its work, with focus on the fiscal wellbeing of the council, transport and waste collections.
They said the main issue was when councillors advocating for the interests of their own council meant clashing with the interests of adjoining local governments where party members were also serving.
“That sort of tension, it just wastes time,” they said.
Did everyone in the party support the book ban?
After widespread backlash and a warning from the state government the council risked losing funding for its libraries, Cumberland councillors voted 13-2 to revoke the ban at a fiery, late night meeting.
In the end, Christou’s party colleagues Paul Garrard and Helen Hughes deserted him and voted to overturn the ban. They had previously voted to instate the ban on 1 May.
Before the 15 May council meeting, Garrard and Hughes claimed they had only intended to have same-sex parenting books removed from the children’s sections of the council-run libraries.
Garrard told Guardian Australia that “we did not pay attention to the precise wording” of the motion and “my party does not support censorship”.
Hughes said the same thing. “I have friends that are in same sex relationships and so forth,” she said.
Only Eddie Sarkis, who was a member of OLC until he quit the party earlier this year, voted with Christou to keep the ban.
“I did not vote with Steve. I voted the way that I would have voted if Steve wasn’t there,” Sarkis said.
Sarkis said he had read Duhig’s book and did not find anything in the book “disturbing”. But he believed it should be in the section for children aged 12 and over.
“Having beautiful, colourful pictures of, you know, two guys hugging and two ladies kissing. It’s not a bad thing, but why do we need to advertise it to kids?” he said.
Green, who is on Parramatta council, said that while he didn’t want to read the book himself it should not have been banned.
“People should be able to read what they want to, but I don’t think that should be given to children,” he said.
“It’s a free country so you should be able to have it in the library.”
What does the future for Our Local Community look like?
Garrard said the party would again run candidates in Cumberland, Parramatta and Canada Bay at this year’s local government elections. OLC will also target Canterbury-Bankstown, Liverpool and “a number of rural areas”, Garrard said.
Christou said the potential for OLC to run candidates in state elections “has been discussed” but the party “is not there yet”.
The future of the party in Canada Bay is looking shaky.
The council’s former longstanding mayor, Angelo Tsirekas, who was an OLC member, was sacked in December after an investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption found he had engaged in serious corrupt conduct by accepting perks from property developers.
Ruggeri has announced she will resign as a councillor at the next election.
