Nedlands mayor Fiona Argyle ordered to apologise for ‘youwilldie’ hashtags

City of Nedlands mayor Fiona Argyle has apologised for using a hashtag during the 2023 mayoral election that one of her fellow council members claimed was a death threat. In a quickly deleted post on her argyle4nedlands Instagram account, Ms Argyle — who was campaigning to hold on to the mayoral chains — posted a screenshot of a message referring to a complaint about her election signage and social media posts. In the caption, Ms Argyle wrote: “To the dinosaurs, who complain about a good woman .... Please know your days are numbered.” This was followed by the hashtags “get a life”, “you will die”, “shame on you” and “you destroyed it for all of us”. It came after another earlier post picturing Ms Argyle grinning from inside a giant dinosaur egg with the caption: “It’s me versus the dinosaurs .... again?!”. And: “Vote 1 Mayor Argyle.” Both were deleted. A complaint about the post referencing her signage was lodged with the Local Government Standards Panel, which found Ms Argyle breached regulations with the “improper” hashtags. “I acknowledge that I should not have used the hashtags and I now apologise to the public and my fellow councillors,” she said at the city’s August 27 meeting. At the time, Ms Argyle said the post was “crafted during a moment of exasperation” with her challengers’ stance on environmental initiatives. Her apology did not mollify Noel Youngman, who was also seeking election as mayor and said at the meeting that he “knew” he was one of the people the youwilldie hastag was directed at. “I had the horrible task that day of actually telling my children to be careful who came around them that day because of a death threat that was put out online,” he said before Rebecca Coghlan interrupted with a point of order. Cr Coghlan said Cr Youngman was casting an “adverse reflection” on a previous council decision, which Ms Argyle upheld. She asked Cr Youngman to “kindly sit down” three times before the meeting continued. “OK, you can make that death threat,” Cr Youngman said as he sat down.