The councillor, the local paper and a free passage to India

It started with a deputy mayor accepting an all-expenses-paid trip to Kerala, India.

The trip, according to Hawkesbury City Council’s Sarah McMahon, would facilitate trade, business and tourism opportunities and be paid for by Kerala’s tourism board and Malaysia Airlines. Despite concerns from some of her colleagues, including one who warned “free trips are never free”, the majority of councillors approved the international trade delegation. Then the local paper picked up the story and everything began to unravel.

Two days later, it was announced McMahon’s trip had been indefinitely postponed and the council began issuing crisis communications. So what happened?

Mayor Les Sheather said the invitation for McMahon to travel to India came as a “late request” from the Sydney Hills Business Chamber before the February 17 council meeting. The one-week trip was originally scheduled for March 1.

With the Tourism Department of the Kerala State Government and Malaysia Airlines footing the bill, the council said in a media release it would not provide any financial support apart from $400 for airport taxes. But Independent councillor Nathan Zamprogno, one of two councillors who voted against McMahon’s plans, said there was “no such thing as a free trip.

“In my view, it’s even worse than if council had paid for the trip itself, because there will now be questions about what ‘quid pro quo’ is expected in return for the thousands of dollars that will be spent on airfares, accommodations and such,” he said.

“It does not pass the pub test.”

In the meeting, Sheather supported the international visit, saying “opportunities like this don’t come around very often” and the deputy mayor had been asked to attend.

“Hopefully, what comes out of it [is] of benefit to our community,” he said.

A mayoral minute showed how the trip would be funded and said a report would be written following the visit to report back. It did not record what the delegation would involve or why the deputy mayor had been selected for it.

Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig said it’s up to the council “to decide whether accepting the invitation is appropriate and in the best interests of the community”.

Tensions boil over

Predictably, McMahon’s approved visit attracted community attention and the Hawkesbury Gazette published three articles about it. The reports, which questioned how the trade delegation would benefit Hawkesbury residents, attracted the ire of the deputy mayor, who took to Facebook to accuse the paper of peddling “misinformation” that was “vile, destructive and evil”.

“Enough is enough Kooryn. You need to stop,” she posted, referring to the paper’s publisher, Kooryn Sheaves, a former TAFE teacher who took over the Gazette from Australian Community Media in 2023. Despite the Gazette saying the majority of the trip would be funded externally, McMahon said Sheaves wanted residents to believe it would have been paid for by ratepayers.

McMahon told the Herald she believed the paper encouraged a dialogue of hate and contempt towards her because it published the article, “that you know is going to cause immense harm to the female deputy mayor” on International Women’s Day.

“I would be more than encouraging of her continuing on if she reported in a positive way,” McMahon said of the Gazette’s publisher. “And just for example, to highlight the deliberate attempt to cause harm to me, that story was dropped at prime-time Sunday on International Women’s Day.”

Sheaves said she was shocked by McMahon’s response to the article. “I think that the language is inappropriate and it’s disproportionate, completely disproportionate,” she said. So, she published another article about it, this one titled “War of Words in the Hawkesbury”.

“What began as scrutiny of a council-approved overseas trip has since expanded into accusations, social media backlash and a broader debate about how elected representatives respond when the public pushes back,” the Gazette told its readers.

The tension between the Gazette and the deputy mayor has been ongoing since the newspaper relaunched in 2025 following the closure of the Hawkesbury Post, another local media outlet.

The international trade delegation is expected to be rescheduled for a later date. The Gazette said it would follow the story.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a bureau in the heart of Parramatta. Email parramatta@smh.com.au with news tips.