Thursday, February 18, 2016

Council meeting cancelled after man dressed as banana protested against mayor's trip

A man dressed as a banana and handing out bananas in protest against mayoral expenses disrupted a local shire council meeting north of Melbourne, Australia.



The stunt was apparently a barb directed at Mitchell Shire's mayor Sue Marstaeller over her trip in her council car to Coffs Harbour, which has a tourist attraction known as the Big Banana. The Broadford meeting was called to a halt after the large banana wandered around the chamber.

Former mayor Bob Humm said it was unfortunate a council meeting was cut short by the man's antics. "I think it was very disappointing for probably a couple of the councillors because a couple of them had some fairly important items on the agenda that they needed to get moved and passed through the council," he said. "I was a little bit surprised that the meeting was completely adjourned.



"The councillors possibly could have gone to the council room - called the meeting off for half an hour, got [to] the council room, then come back and completed the meeting. But obviously the mayor was quite offended." Mr Humm said it was not the first time locals had resorted to the tactics. Someone dressed as a gorilla ran around the chamber when the shire was discussing circuses about 10 years ago.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's not a very good banana costume. Perhaps he should return home and work on his crafting skills a bit more.

lukus said...

I love the way he's sitting there kind of slumped over and forlorn looking. Like "Sad Keanu".

I say the council are a bunch of wusses. Here in the U.S., this is more the norm for council meetings.

Ed Davidoff said...

Traveling by car from Melbourne to Coffs Harbour is a really long trip - almost 900 miles. I wonder why the mayor wanted to drive instead of taking a commercial flight.

WilliamRocket said...

She intends to take her family and visit many other tourist spots on the way.
For anybody else, this 2 weeks of touring around the country with their family, this mayor wants the ratepayers to pay for her entire family to go on holiday with her.
While we all keep working hard to pay our rates.
It's a bit like Russia.