Walkouts, accusations and a blacked-out agenda: The council meeting where everything went wrong

September 22, 2026 — 7:30pm

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As if resigned to what was about to take place under his watch, Liverpool City Council chief executive Jason Breton stuck his hand in his personal lolly bowl and sat back as councillor Peter Ristevski launched a verbal attack on the mayor.

“Mate, no wonder people call you a dirty individual. You are very dirty,” Ristevski, a former accountant who lost his registration over serious misconduct and new member of Lyle Shelton’s conservative Family First party, sneered at Liberal Mayor Ned Mannoun. “You are a very dirty individual. You are a despicable human being.”

Then he called the mayor a criminal, raising unsubstantiated (and denied) allegations from 11 years ago that the mayor had been fired from a job at the Mounties club for stealing gym vouchers.

This was an extraordinary council meeting, by name and by nature.

It was, in the administrative sense, an extraordinary meeting: the regular monthly meeting, when councillors were set to vote on who would be deputy mayor for the next year, had to be rescheduled because Mannoun and Breton........

© The Sydney Morning Herald