A regional council in Western Australia’s Goldfields has defended spending thousands of dollars to send cease-and-desist letters to residents over critical comments they posted on social media.
Key points:
- The council says the legal action followed four years of insults from a handful of people
- Residents say the letters are an attempt to stifle their freedom of expression
- Dundas is a remote shire of 700 people in in an area seven times bigger than Sydney
King & Wood Mallesons, one of the world’s largest law firms, drafted cease and desist letters on behalf of the Shire of Dundas, demanding Facebook posts be taken down and a written apology provided.
The shire, which has fewer than 700 residents from Norseman to Eucla at the South Australian border, alleges the online comments defame its president Laurene Bonza and chief executive Peter Fitchat.
The letters, one of which was seen by the ABC, were sent to at least three residents.
Pat Smith, 75, received a letter from the shire’s lawyers on July 14.
Ms Smith, who said she was diabetic and did not drive, said she had no intention of apologising.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me. Basically it’s curtailing my freedom of speech,” she said.
“They’ll have hard cheese in getting any damages out of me, because I’m a pensioner and that’s all the income I have.”
Leon Cuso, 71, said he felt equally baffled by the letter he received.
“They want to suppress you talking,” he said.
‘Four years’ of insults
Mr Fitchat defended the decision to spend about $4,500 to engage lawyers and said it was not “vindictive”.
Mr Fitchat said the council had contemplated involving lawyers for nearly two years before engaging representation.
“It’s been four years of being insulted by a handful of people, and that’s the end of it, no more,” he said.
The Shire of Dundas has been at the centre of controversy recently, with the only GP in Norseman abruptly closing his clinic after a dispute with the council.
The council had refused to meet long-serving GP Graham Rowlands’ request for up to $300,000 in additional locum funding.
A number of Norseman residents blamed the council for the GP’s departure.
“If we have the money, we pay, but we don’t, so we have to consider what we do,” Mr Fitchat said.
Action follows Kalgoorlie-Boulder vote
The legal action follows similar moves in 2019 by the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, which voted to allow elected members and staff to access funds for legal action when a constituent’s comment was defamatory and targeted the person.
The council said at the time that the volume of abusive and defamatory comments was escalating and becoming more personal.
Local Government Minister David Michael said councils needed to be prudent in how they spent ratepayers’ money.
“Ratepayer money and spending it well is important,” he said.
“When it comes to legal costs and involving lawyers in matters, sometimes that is unavoidable, but councils should be very prudent as to when that is used.”
Mr Michael did not comment directly on the Norseman dispute, but said if residents were unhappy with the actions of their shire, they could vote for change in October’s local government elections.
Council to seek advice
Mr Fitchat invited the recipients of the legal letters to attend council meetings, urging residents to use official channels, and not Facebook, to voice any complaints.
“We don’t mind the raising of the concerns with the doctor, the IGA and the post office, but we have the big, big problem of being called names,” he said.
“If you want to run the council through Facebook, that’s not going to work.
Mr Fitchat said if residents did not comply with requests in the legal letters, he would seek further advice, including from the WA Local Government Association (WALGA), before deciding how to proceed.
The ABC has contacted WALGA for comment.
