Swiss Grand email blockage

After Waverley Council last month approved the application for redevelopment of the Bondi Swiss Grand Hotel, allegations have arisen public submissions were blocked from councillor emails.

Emails stemming from an online campaign run by Rescue Bondi – allowing concerned residents opposed to the Swiss Grand development to send either a template or written email to members of Council through their site – were temporarily blocked a week before Council’s vote on the development application (DA).

On Monday February 18, eight days before the Council vote, the Computer Services Manager put a block on emails from the site, in turn preventing them from reaching councillor emails.

General Manager for Waverley Council Tony Reed said a spike in the number of emails from the campaign site was reported by the Computer Services Manager.

“The Manager of Computer Services prepared a spreadsheet of the emails that had been blocked and this was distributed to all councillors,” he said.

“My staff interrogated the spreadsheet and identified the source emails. Of approximately 900 individual listings, email addresses for just over 600 were identified and a response email forwarded to them on March 1, explaining the reason for the block to emails.”

Labor Councillor John Wakefield said he was not notified of the block until he approached Mr Reed on Tuesday February 19 to ask why no more submissions on the DA were arriving in his inbox. He said he has since been unable to recover the submissions that were sent while the block was in operation.

“After complaints from me – and I understand Councillor [Paula] Masselos made similar complaints – the block was removed I believe on the Wednesday,” he said.

“In that crucial time in the run up to the decision about the DA on the Tuesday night a large number of email submissions were not received as a consequence of the block, and therefore could not have been read let alone considered as part of the deliberation of councillors.

“I believe that something in the order of around 200 emails were lost through the process of Council stopping [them].”

Mayor Sally Betts said a spike in identical emails regarding the Swiss Grand development is what led to the block, but assured the emails had now been recovered and released to councillors.

“Council’s IT department’s reaction to a suspected spam incident led to emails from the Rescue Bondi site being blocked from councillors’ inboxes for a short period,” she said.

“When councillors tried to respond to the emails, many bounced back as invalid email addresses.

“Council’s IT department put a temporary block on all emails that came from the one website when they were investigating the spike.

“No emails were withheld from councillors once the temporary block was lifted … There was no overall filter kept in place.”

Lenore Kulakauskas, President of Friends of Bondi Pavilion, organised the campaign. She said a spike in submissions sent from her site was not a legitimate justification for the Council’s implementation of a filter, even if only temporarily.

Ms Kulakauskas also said that she has copies of all 922 emails sent from the campaign website, and that many were not identical reproductions of the template.

Ms Kulakauskas said she was concerned about emails she received in response to the campaign from Ms Betts – who called the campaign submissions sent to her personal email as “robotic” and “imped[ing] councillors [from] undertaking their role”. Councillor Andrew Cusack said they were “just abuse” and “very distressing”.

Mr Wakefield said that he is not convinced by the Liberals’ explanation of the email block and that it is untrue to say that the majority of the submissions were “identical”.

“I believe this block was put in place at request of one or more of the Liberal councillors and potentially even the Mayor,” he said.

Ms Betts refuted any public submissions to the DA were ignored and that other councillors were given access to them once the block was lifted.

“They were only blocked whilst IT investigated the spike in emails. During that time they were put aside in a folder,” she said.

“As soon as IT established that they were coming from a single genuine source they were released to the relevant councillors … and I did read them.”

By Will Mumford