By Cam Lucadou-Wells
ANDREW Hartley’s aim was to organise an apolitical crime prevention rally – but ended up in a political bunfight with Casey’s Mayor Sam Aziz.
The pair clashed after Mr Hartley deleted the mayor’s post on the Casey Residents Crime Prevention Gathering’s Facebook page the day before the rally on 9 September.
The post had linked to the council’s online petition for more law-and-order action from the State and Federal Governments, and tougher sentencing at magistrates’ courts.
“This event page is not the forum for anyone’s political agenda,” Mr Hartley stated on Facebook.
“If anyone wants to sign the Mayor’s petition please visit his Facebook page.”
Eight minutes later at 4.30pm, Mr Hartley declared Cr Aziz called him and withdrew his support for the event “unless I support his political agenda and post his comments”.
Cr Aziz responded on the group’s page half an hour later that “I am happy to turn up tomorrow, was always going to”.
“It was Andrew who told me he would rather not have me here.”
Cr Aziz, who had intervened a week earlier to stop the event being scuttled over red-tape such as public liability insurance, said “we can’t afford to be divided on this”.
“It was never about politics, it was about the most effective way to protect the community.”
At the 400-strong rally the next day, Cr Aziz and Mr Hartley kept their distance and didn’t speak to each other at the event.
However Cr Aziz put aside their “robust discussions” to join other speakers to thank Mr Hartley for the “fantastic forum”.
In spruiking his council’s push for a law-and-order crackdown, Cr Aziz said “politics is the answer to some of our problems”.
Another speaker and federal MP Jason Wood re-asserted his desire – shared by Cr Aziz and Casey council – for a national policing taskforce to tackle Apex Gang and similar groups, as well as deporting jailed offenders who were foreign nationals.
Mr Wood told the crowd there was, however, a difficulty with the latter proposal because many of them were juveniles – and presumably wouldn’t be jailed.
Cr Aziz later told Star News that non-citizens who don’t respect Australian law should be deported.
“You can’t expect Australia to provide you a good life and go on a crime spree.”
Despite the tension with Mr Hartley, the mayor said Casey needed three or four similar gatherings to “get the community to come together”.
