A leaked email from a northern New South Wales council has caused outrage among a group of caravan owners facing eviction from four council-run parks.<\/p>\n
The Clarence Valley Council internal email included an AI-generated illustration of a series of wrecking balls being ridden by smiling and cheering workers in hard hats smashing caravans.<\/p>\n
The email was leaked amid a battle between long-term tenants of council-run caravan parks in Brooms Head, Iluka, Minnie Water and Wooli.<\/p>\n
The van owners were given 120 days to vacate their casually leased sites in March because the council wanted to make the sites available for short-term tourists.<\/p>\n
While the leases stipulated occupancy of 180 days or less, some owners had been living there on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.<\/p>\n
A group of about 100 have been fighting the decision in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Laura Black says the leaked wrecking ball email has been misinterpreted. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Email ‘misinterpreted’<\/p>\n
Clarence Valley Council general manager Laura Black said the email, which referenced the Miley Cyrus song Wrecking Ball, had been “misinterpreted”.<\/p>\n
She said the email was a response to a call for ideas for a staff performance at Grafton’s annual Jacaranda Festival, which is themed “A Crowning Glory”.<\/p>\n
The email began with: “Here are a few suggestions we have received already to get you thinking.”<\/p>\n
“1. Play the song Wrecking Bally Miley Cyrus – Staff flying around on wrecking balls with crowns on knocking over caravans?? too soon? too sensitive? Maybe next year?”<\/p>\n
Van owner Simon Chase, who faces eviction from the park in Iluka and leads a group of other owners appealing their eviction, said he was furious.<\/p>\n
“For anyone to make fun of people losing their homes is an absolute disgrace,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It is downright disgusting and tasteless in my view.”<\/p>\n
Mr Chase said the email was sent anonymously by someone at the council to one of the members in the van owners group.<\/p>\n
“It makes a cruel mockery of the distress and hardship inflicted on our elderly and vulnerable residents whose livelihoods, health and family traditions have already been shattered,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Simon Chase has been told he needs to remove his van in Iluka.\u00a0 (Supplied: Simon Chase)<\/p>\n
Idea rejected<\/p>\n
Ms Black said the wrecking ball email was one of “three or four” ideas put forward for a performance by staff at the annual Jacaranda Festival \u2014 an idea that was ultimately rejected.<\/p>\n
“Each year a small number of staff take the lead and they instigate a few ideas usually based on recent events that have caught the eye of the community and they share those ideas,” Ms Black said.<\/p>\n
“The Miley Cyrus one was considered insensitive. It was actually a mockery of us not of the holiday van owners. It was a mockery of the way it has been perceived we have gone about this.”<\/p>\n
Ms Black said no staff would be reprimanded for the wrecking ball email but they would take “learnings” from it.<\/p>\n
“All humans make errors,” she said.<\/p>\n
“In hindsight, when you look at it, I understand why [staff] thought that it would be potentially offensive to some, why they thought it was insensitive and definitely that they thought it would be misinterpreted.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leaked email from a northern New South Wales council has caused outrage among a group of caravan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,116017,116016,116015,116013,116014,68611,135,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-180352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brooms-head","11":"tag-caravan-parks","12":"tag-caravans","13":"tag-clarence-valley","14":"tag-clarence-valley-council","15":"tag-iluka","16":"tag-local-government","17":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}