If you can believe social media – and you can’t – it looked like Southern Downs Regional Councillor Morwenna Harslett made a serious mistake by not putting her holiday rental on her register of interests.
From an anonymous social media post last week, it appeared as though Cr Harslett had been running a luxury guesthouse on her property, charging over $200 a night, for the past seven years.
The business venture, the post claimed, was not on her register of interests. The post suggested tax evasion and “a criminal offense”.
The truth, however, is that Cr Harslett started renting a guest house on her property two weeks ago and she has 30 days to update her register of interests which, she told the Town & Country Journal, she fully intends to do by the deadline.
Cr Harslett is dismissive of anonymous Facebook posts.
“Look, if someone is feeling the need to post anonymously, people should ask what the motivation is there," Cr Harslett said. "It's people trying to cause trouble."
It does beggar belief that Cr Harslett could have been operating an AirBnB for the past two and a half years of her political term without anyone in the community noticing it.
“Quite simply, it hasn’t been on my register of interest because it hasn’t been operational and I have just started up in the last couple of weeks,” Cr Harslett said. “So there’s nothing to see here.”
The incident is similar to one a few months ago when the same anonymous poster accused Cr Sarah Deane of living in Tenterfield Shire when in fact she does not. Instead, she and her husband purchased a rental property there.
The guest cottage, listed on the AirBnB website, is on her property at 60 Sugarloaf Road, the former location of Cherry Tree Nursery. According to the AirnNB site, Cr Harslett has been a host for seven years, which simply reflects how long she has had an account as a host with AirBnB. Cr Harslett previously owned another holiday accommodation which she sold in 2021.
New councillors (and veteran ones) are thoroughly trained in reporting their interests and recognising possible conflicts of interest.
The issue with reporting comes down to real or perceived conflicts of interest. A councillor who owns and operates a short-term holiday home may re-think participating in decisions like the new ratings category, development applications for properties owned by others, council policy on short-term holiday properties, tourism policy, etc.
In short, such a scenario would have been a massive headache for this council, in particular Mayor Melissa Hamilton.
Mayor Hamilton was supportive of Cr Harslett and dismissive of social media.
“I cannot comment on matters personal to Cr Harslet,” Mayor Hamilton told the Town & Country Journal. “I find the ‘trial by social media’ and the pile on to be vile, and it damages our democracy by putting good people off running for local office. Cr Harslett is in my view a local leader who gives a tremendous amount to her community and to the many groups she volunteers with.”
Cr Harslett says “this stuff happens all the time. And I do think that what I’m seeing in the comments [of similar posts] is a bit of a change – people have had enough. I think people reading this stuff on social media want to use social media for the right reasons – to find out what’s going on their community. I think they are actually very tired of having to scroll through hateful stuff like this. Our community is better than this, and we are better than this, and we need to continue to be better than this and call out the bad behaviour.”
