Inga Peulich’s conduct at today’s Clayton Festival

An otherwise very successful Clayton Festival which attracted more than 20,000 people to the heart of Clayton today was unfortunately marred by disrespectful and disruptive conduct by controversial Victorian upper house MP, Inga Peulich.

After first intimidating and upsetting the Aboriginal elder who performed the welcome to country because she was unhappy not to have been specifically acknowledged by the elder, Ms Peulich then demanded to speak and created a significant disturbance to proceedings that caused security officers to intervene.

Despite not having been invited to speak or having previously requested to speak, Ms Peulich tried to insist on speaking mid-stream during the official proceedings.  When told that she was not on the program, she then attempted to hijack the proceedings anyway – by trying to talk over a cultural performance which had begun on the stage.

Monash Council has a good relationship with its MPs which are roughly an even mix of Labor and Liberal MPs.  There are more than 20 MPs which cover Monash City Council and we recognise that at community events, the community is there for other reasons than to hear a long line of politicians speak one after another.  That is why we usually limit the number of politicians speaking to just the state and federal lower house MP in the area in which the event is taking place.  If state or federal funding has contributed to the event we will invite the relevant government to nominate a speaker as well.

Today’s event was fully funded by Monash Council.  As per our policy, days ago we had invited the federal MP who represents part of Clayton, Anna Burke, along with Hong Lim as the local state MP to say a few brief words.  No one else had been asked to speak or had requested to speak.

During my welcome speech I appropriately and warmly acknowledged Ms Peulich’s attendance along with all other MPs who were there.  However, in the middle of proceedings, Ms Peulich left her seat in the public area and approached the MC for the event, ‘Layla’, who was a special invited guest performing the role of MC ‘in character’.  Ms Peulich attempted to pressure Layla into changing the program in order for her to speak.  This placed Layla in a very difficult and a totally unreasonable position for someone who was assisting as a guest at the event.  After it was clarified that Ms Peulich (or any of the other 20,000 plus people in attendance for that matter) were not permitted to simply and unilaterally take over the event, Ms Peulich then stubbornly announced she would speak anyway and started to shout over the MC who by then was introducing the first cultural performance.

This continued into the beginning of the cultural performance with Ms Peulich shouting and gesturing in a frenzied manner.  Regrettably, event security had to intervene to make it clear to Ms Peulich that she was unacceptably disturbing a community event.

It is a shame that one of the biggest events on the Monash cultural calendar was tarnished by such immature and disrespectful behaviour by a long standing Member of Parliament who should know better.

Monash Council will not tolerate a person bullying our staff or our guests at community events which we are responsible for.  Ms Peulich’s disruptive behaviour is thankfully uncharacteristic of the approach taken by other local MPs on both sides of politics in Monash – all of whom are impeccable in supporting community events and letting the focus remain on the community celebration rather than themselves.