Cr Andrew Thaler tried to appeal his suspension from SMRC, but was unsuccessful. Photo: Andrew Thaler.
Councillor Andrew Thaler has lost his appeal of his suspension from Snowy Monaro Regional Council (SMRC), which was handed to him over a stream of online comments deemed inappropriate.
In May 2025, the NSW Office of Local Government ordered him to be suspended from civic office for three months after he was found to have repeatedly engaged in misconduct due to comments made online. He was also ordered to apologise for his misconduct.
Cr Thaler appealed the decision in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), arguing it was invalid.
But on Thursday (10 July), NCAT deputy president Nancy Hennessy said she did not accept this argument, decided he did engage in misconduct and that the appropriate order was to confirm the decision.
She said that on 4 March, 2025, Cr Thaler posted on the social media platform Facebook to say he intended to “air some very dirty laundry of the [council]”.
“I’m going to put a bunch of things on record. It will lead probably to code of conduct complaints or a round of new weird allegations by my fellow councillors on the council. But I don’t think anyone’s worked out yet that I don’t care,” he then said in a YouTube video the following day.
He went on to repeatedly call one of his fellow SMRC councillors a “fat dumb blonde” in the video.
“And the reason why I call [her] the fat dumb blonde is because that’s what she is. And I’m calling you out. You’re a disgusting, despicable Labor Party creature who lies about me at every opportunity,” he said.
Cr Thaler then called a council employee a “DEI hire”, using a term that refers to diversity, equity and inclusion. He referred to this employee as an “it” and said if “you can’t work out if you’re a boy or a girl, how can you work out whether to enforce the law”.
He also made comments about SMRC’s interim CEO Stephen Dunshea, telling him: “Do your job or hand in your resignation, put your keys and your credit card on the table and just f–k off.”
Deputy president Hennessy said Cr Thaler then published a video to Facebook on 6 March in which he repeated many of the statements he made in the above YouTube video.
Cr Andrew Thaler’s three-month suspension ends in August. Photo: Claire Fenwicke.
Then in a Facebook post on 12 March, Cr Thaler said the fellow councillor he referred to earlier was “not a fit or proper person to be a councillor in service of the people” and “a big, fat, liar”.
Deputy president Hennessy found many of the comments made on social media were inappropriate.
“Councillor Thaler’s misconduct includes repeatedly abusing and personally attacking another councillor and council employees,” she said.
She said some of the comments were reasonably likely to have adversely affected the health and safety of the councillor, the employee and Mr Dunshea.
“Councillor Thaler also threatened and attempted to intimidate these people,” she said. ”These attacks and threats were made in the process of criticising their integrity or competence or in response to perceived threats they had made.”
The deputy president said Cr Thaler did not deny saying the above comments, but argued the code of conduct could not prevent a person from using rude, hard or offensive words.
He also claimed there was a political agenda to remove him from the council and a “pattern of antagonistic behaviour” towards him by certain councillors and executive staff.
“I used language that may have caused the people I was describing to feel either harassed, discriminated against, vilified, bullied, or that their health and safety was compromised,” he said about some comments on Facebook.
“Though I did use those words to shock or to emphasise what I was explaining in my posts, it was never my intention to make those people feel such a way.”
Deputy president Hennessy said Cr Thaler reported being annoyed, frustrated and incensed by the conduct of others and had argued the misconduct must be viewed in that context.
“Councillor Thaler can raise matters in the public interest through the appropriate channels and defend himself when he considers he has been wrongly accused. Doing so does not give him the right to engage in misconduct,” she said.
She ordered him to apologise for the misconduct. His suspension ends on 4 August.
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