{"id":5289,"date":"2026-05-05T21:56:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/5289\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T21:56:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:56:23","slug":"bayswater-mayor-fires-back-at-councillor-big-don-smoked-meats-owner-donovan-macdonald-after-his-online-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/5289\/","title":{"rendered":"Bayswater mayor fires back at councillor, Big Don Smoked Meats owner Donovan MacDonald after his online rant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">The City of Bayswater mayor claims a viral video made by a fellow council member about \u201clazy, wasteful and slow moving\u201d local government undermines the city\u2019s work and damages its reputation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Big Don Smoked Meats owner and newly elected City of Bayswater councillor Donovan MacDonald <a class=\"css-445i33-StyledTextLink ezegcyi0\" data-link-type=\"article-inline\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.perthnow.com.au\/wa\/perth\/central\/central\/big-dons-owner-and-councillor-donovan-macdonald-slams-lazy-wasteful-and-slow-moving-local-government-c-22236249\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">blasted his own local government<\/a> on Monday night in a \u201ctransparent\u201d social media post.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">WATCH HIS FOUL-MOUTHED RANT IN THE VIDEO PLAYER ABOVE<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Cr MacDonald shared his frustration after an audit, risk and improvement committee meeting on Monday night where an external consultant found the city had \u201cserious food safety issues\u201d that inspectors had marked as compliant when they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">In the video, Cr MacDonald suggested against anyone opening a food business in the city and claimed \u201cnothing f****** gets done\u201d in local government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cNo one\u2019s getting anything done. That is just the struggle of government,\u201d he said in his video.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Cr MacDonald suggested people run for local government to be a \u201cthorn in their f****** ass\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ae1ec4b62681ed679a012bd0275fc5cd09ffd3a5.jpg\" alt=\"Bayswater mayor Filomena Piffaretti.\" class=\"css-16r7l45-StyledImage en5ut4d0\"\/>Camera IconBayswater mayor Filomena Piffaretti. Credit: City of Bayswater<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Bayswater mayor Filomena Piffaretti said the City of Bayswater was a vibrant inner-city local government its residents were proud of.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cCr MacDonald\u2019s comments not only damage the city\u2019s reputation but undermine the work dedicated staff do on behalf of the community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cIf Cr MacDonald\u2019s goal, as a newly elected City of Bayswater councillor, is to support local food businesses, he needs to work collaboratively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cThe compliance issues Cr MacDonald refers to were administrative in nature and identified through a routine internal audit. The city is implementing the improvements recommended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cIn my experience, the best way to drive improvements is for council and the administration to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Cr MacDonald shared DMs and memes about the situation on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3daa18be7212f663e0a3f0b90ea3fe006eaebcd4-161x229-x0y125w473h673.jpg\" alt=\"Big Don posted this meme on his Instagram page.\" class=\"css-16r7l45-StyledImage en5ut4d0\"\/>Camera IconBig Don posted this meme on his Instagram page. Credit: Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of Bayswater mayor claims a viral video made by a fellow council member about \u201clazy, wasteful&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[917,335,464],"class_list":{"0":"post-5289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-perth","8":"tag-central","9":"tag-perth","10":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}