A Teal Independent volunteer has been reported to police after he allegedly lashed out at Liberal volunteers for taking the best places for their candidate’s posters.
The fierce dispute, which was caught on video, erupted after Liberal volunteers arrived early Thursday to take advantage of prime spots to display corpipes for their candidate, Anthony Roberts, outside the Lane Cove Council Civic Center on the exclusive North Shore. from Sydney.
When Noel Plumb, a volunteer for independent candidate Victoria Davidson, arrived at 6:30 a.m., he was outraged to see the best spots gone.
He then allegedly threatened to take down Mr. Roberts’ posters.
That’s when Liberal campaign worker Ben Collins began filming Mr Plumb with his phone camera.
A volunteer for a Teal independent has been reported to police for allegedly assaulting a Liberal counterpart as election tensions boiled over between rival campaign workers.
When Noel Plumb, a volunteer for independent candidate Victoria Davidson, arrived at 6:30 am, he was outraged to see that the best places were covered with material promoting the liberal Anthony Roberts.
One clip showed Mr Plumb marching towards Mr Collins’ camera angrily yelling, ‘don’t you dare photograph me’ before the screen went black.
Rory Burke, a colleague of Collins’s, claimed that the screen went black because Plumb grabbed the phone.
Plumb had insisted that the liberals claimed that all the best places to display corflutes were unfair and wanted some removed.
“(Mr Plumb) demanded we remove the corflutes and said: ‘I’m going to start ripping them and you’ll need physical violence to stop me,'” Mr Burke alleged to Daily Mail Australia.
“You can’t just stand up and demand that other parties remove their material, those are not the rules of engagement. The rules are that the first people to arrive can put their signs wherever they want.
‘If you don’t want to get up early and do the hard work, then you won’t be rewarded.’
A second video clip showed Mr Plumb, previously an environmental campaigner who also volunteered for the Greens, still arguing with the Liberal volunteers.
You got to be kidding. You have got to be kidding,’ she said.
‘You’re actually over seven years old right now.’
Mr Plumb then turned to the camera and said ‘are you still photographing me?’
“Yes, I have permission, you are in a public space,” replied Mr. Collins.
‘Go ahead, take my phone again.’
Liberal volunteers Ben Collins and Rory Burke (wearing blue t-shirts) came to the outskirts of Lane Cove Council chamber early Thursday to put up the Anthony Roberts posters in the best places. Mr. Collins (left) filmed rival volunteer Noel Plumb allegedly acting aggressively
Liberal candidate Anthony Roberts (foreground) standing in front of his army of campaign workers
Mr. Plumb is a campaign worker for Victoria Davidson, an independent candidate from Lane Cove. There is no suggestion that Ms. Davidson has done anything wrong.
‘Dude, you’d be the first to object and you know, you’re just a stupid man.’
Burke said the atmosphere among volunteers from opposing parties at polling stations is generally competitive but generally fun.
“There’s a bit of joking around, but at the end of the day we lend each other a hand packing,” he said.
But he called Mr. Plumb “demanding, overbearing and overly aggressive.”
NSW Police said in a statement that they were investigating a report about “an alleged disturbance” outside a community center in Lane Cove on Thursday at 6:40am.
“There were no reports of injuries,” police said.
The investigations continue.
A spokesman for Victoria Davidson’s office confirmed in a statement that a ’70 year old’ volunteer was involved in a dispute with two NSW Liberal Party representatives ‘over the equitable allocation of space for election materials’.
The volunteer is understood to have been Noel Plumb.
Mr Plumb was said to have been so upset by the interaction with the Liberal volunteers that he called the police.
“The campaign team have spoken with the volunteer and it has been agreed that he will no longer be involved in the Victoria campaign.”
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Noel Plumb for comment.
Mr. Plumb made headlines in 2020 after his 12-year battle with a neighbor over a tree was revealed.
Anthony Saba and Noel Plumb’s suburban life began in 2008 in East Ryde, north-west Sydney, on a tree in their backyard.
Mr. Plumb made headlines in 2020 after his 12-year battle with a neighbor over a tree was revealed.
Noel Plumb (pictured) is hoping that an incredible 12-year neighborhood feud in suburban Sydney will soon come to an end.
Mr Plumb was also in the news in 2015 when he was refused entry to the New South Wales Parliament because he was wearing a T-shirt with a koala-friendly slogan as part of his environmental activism.
Mr. Plumb, a retired shrubbery regrower, called his local council to introduce Mr. Saba, who was cutting down large gum trees in his backyard.
Since then Mr Saba, Mr Plumb and his now ex-wife Jeanette Minifie, and their neighbor Stuart Maxwell, have been involved in legal action in the NSW Local Court, District Court, High Court and Civil Courts. and NSW Administrative (NCAT).
The latest act in the dispute was heard before NCAT in March 2020, where the court ruled that a fence instigated by Ms Minifie between her and Mr Maxwell’s home was unlawful.
Plumb claimed the battle had had a “huge impact” and hoped it would end soon, while Saba told Daily Mail Australia that he intends to recover every penny of the $230,000 he is owed by his neighborhood nemesis.
Mr Plumb was also in the news in 2015 when he was refused entry to the New South Wales Parliament because he was wearing a T-shirt with a koala-friendly slogan.
His black and white jersey featured a smiling koala on the front, below the words “Save our South Shore Koala”.
On the back were the words “save me, save my forest”.
“These days I wear a koala T-shirt all the time, because I’m an activist,” he said.
Mr Plumb had planned to use it for the launch of a conservation report in the New South Wales Parliament, but was denied access.
