Divided civic council to dump state chiefs
Greg Roberts
January 18, 2006
THE National Civic Council is set to dump all its state presidents as a bitter internal row threatens to undermine the influential Catholic political organisation.
Faced with allegations that the organisation has been infiltrated by the anti-Semitic LaRouche movement, the NCC leadership has locked some of the organisation’s senior office-bearers out of their offices and initiated legal action against others.
The NCC is believed to be under the effective control of a group of four executive members, led by NCC national president Peter Westmore and vice-president Pat Byrne.
Mr Westmore declined to comment yesterday.
The state presidents, who will be dumped at the organisation’s national conference in Melbourne next month, have been increasingly vocal in expressing concerns over the LaRouche allegations and other matters.
Over the Christmas break, the NCC leadership ordered that the locks be changed in the organisation’s Brisbane office, barring access to Queensland NCC organiser and Australian Family Association secretary Victor Sirl and the NCC’s Queensland secretary of 23 years, Carole McNeill.
Mr Sirl’s position has been abolished. He applied unsuccessfully for a newly created job.
Victorian NCC president Anthony Capello said he had earlier been locked out of the organisation’s national headquarters in Melbourne.
Mr Capello said he had resigned from a full-time position with the NCC and seven other employees in the Melbourne office had quit in recent months.
He was not worried about being dumped as state president at the conference, he said. “I’ve reached the conclusion that this organisation has lost direction and that the current management is out of touch.”
Mr Capello said he had expressed concerns to the leadership about ties between senior NCC figures and extremist organisations, including the LaRouche-aligned Citizens Electoral Council and the League of Rights, but had been ignored.
NCC South Australian president Paul Russell said many members were deeply disturbed about the organisation’s direction. “The only people we seem to be attracting these days are the hard noses of the lunar Right,” Mr Russell said.
The NCC has launched legal action against its West Australian president, Richard Egan, in the West Australian Supreme Court.
Mr Egan said the action concerned the ownership of property shared between the NCC and the NCC-affiliated Coalition for the Defence of Human Life.
He described the action as baseless. “I am surprised that my colleagues would go as far as taking legal action and I hope it can be resolved,” he said.
