ORANGE Ratepayers Association (ORA) member Cyril Smith was told to read through the constitution of his organisation last night before returning to the witness box this morning in Bathurst Local Court.
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Mr Smith and fellow ORA member Brian Wood are defending an application by former Orange councillor Fiona Rossiter for a personal violence order against the men, claiming she was bullied, threatened and discouraged from running for Orange City Council last year.
Barrister Sophie Walsh, representing Ms Rossiter, put it to Mr Smith that, under the organisation’s constitution, he and Mr Woods had no authority to exclude Ms Rossiter, her husband Paul, online writer Derek Maitland and Scott Jacobs from its annual general meeting at Orange City Bowling Club on July 24.
Police were called to the meeting after the group refused to leave.
“Cr Rossiter was an intruder and she had no right to be there,” Mr Smith told the court.
“She came there to be intimidating and disruptive.”
Ms Walsh questioned Mr Smith about the way the organisation approved membership, asking about the ORA’s rules for people who wanted to attend meeting to join.
She asked Mr Smith to point out the clauses in the constitution excluding non-members from meetings.
After taking several minutes and being unable to find the clause, he said “you’ll have to be patient.”
Magistrate Michael Allen suggested Mr Smith take the court’s copy of the constitution home last night so he could check it and answer the question this morning in court.
When asked why Mr Woods had called the police to the AGM, Mr Smith said there were concerns about the way Mr Jacobs was behaving.
“He was extremely fiery,” Mr Smith said.
“He’d verbally said to us on the 10th of July to stick our association up our a....”
However, Ms Walsh alleged it was Mr Woods who became aggressive and lunged at Mr Maitland after he and the others began protesting being ejected.
“I dispute that,” Mr Smith said.
Earlier Ms Walsh accused Mr Smith of orchestrating a campaign within the ORA to discourage Ms Rossiter from standing for council at last year’s September election.
Mr Smith denied the allegation, saying he had no recollection of an email he had sent to ORA members regarding Ms Rossiter.
However, Ms Walsh produced an email, written by Mr Smith and circulated to members of the ORA, which said, “It appears John Davis is not running, but Russell Turner is running and it appears the Nats [National Party of Australia] are taking over in Orange. The Ratepayers Association should encourage Fiona Rossiter not to run.”
What did you mean by that?” asked Ms Walsh.
“I can’t remember, you’ve probably got that illegally,” Mr Smith said, referring to the email.
The case is being heard in Bathurst as it was first scheduled under Magistrate Michael Allen when he was relieving magistrate in Orange several months ago.
* For details of the evidence given yesterday by Mayor of Orange mayor John Davis, see tomorrow’s Central Western Daily.
