'Forgot I was mayor': Basil Zempilas apologises for transgender comments saying he forgot his position

Even in this era of turbo-charged politics, it’s a remarkable feat to be described as repugnant, bigoted, narrow-minded and parochial barely a fortnight after taking office.

Just 11 days after being sworn in as Perth’s new lord mayor, 49-year-old media celebrity Basil Zempilas was widely denounced after slurring transgender people on his morning radio show.

“If you’ve got a penis mate, you’re a bloke,” he told 6PR listeners on Wednesday morning during a discussion about an upcoming LGBTQ+ boxing tournament due to be held in Sydney.

“If you’ve got a vagina, you’re a woman. Game over,” Zempilas added, before offering a $100 Retravision voucher to any caller who “has a penis but is a woman”.

When co-host Steve Mills asked how Zempilas, as lord mayor, would handle the prospect of meeting a constituent who identifies as a woman but has a penis, he responded by joking “handle the penis?”

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He later remarked that the station had more redheaded listeners than “hermaphrodites”.

Condemnation was swift. Advocacy group TransFolk of WA chair Hunter Gurevich labelled Zempilas’ comments as: “repugnant, bigoted, narrow-minded, parochial and fundamentally denying contemporary science”.

“Further, it puts LGBTQIA+ people at increased risk of harm, when we are already a vulnerable group in society,” Gurevich said.

Within hours, a petition launched by Perth Scorpions Volleyball Club for Zempilas to stand down as mayor had garnered hundreds of signatures, and a “Stand Up to Transphobia, Protest Basil Zempilas” march had been scheduled for Saturday.

Another online petition to move next month’s annual Pride WA festival to the neighbouring City of Vincent quickly collected more than 2,000 signatures. WA’s Pride festival has been held in the CBD for more than two decades.

By the following morning, Zempilas, best known as one of the voices of Channel Seven’s AFL coverage, was learning a brutal lesson about the responsibilities of political life.

Retravision and Nine-owned 6PR hurriedly distanced themselves from the scandal and Zempilas was back on his 5am breakfast show apologising and interviewing the LGBTQ+ newspaper OUTinPerth editor Graeme Watson to “better educate” himself.

Seven West Media did not respond to questions about whether Zempilas would be disciplined or stood down over the quickly evolving scandal.

Meanwhile, Gurevich and Pride WA president Curtis Ward published a letter detailing six ethical principles from the City of Perth’s own code of conduct that had been breached.

By that afternoon, Zempilas was forced to front the media and again apologise for his comments.

He offered the excuse that he had “forgotten” he was lord mayor at the time – a job he landed just a fortnight ago after a highly visible election campaign, and which reportedly earns him more than $180,000 a year.

The City of Perth and the lord mayor would not answer detailed questions from the Guardian, but by Thursday afternoon a video featuring a contrite Zempilas stated he was wrong and once again begged for forgiveness.

Fellow Perth media personality and one of Zempilas’ mayoral race rivals Mark Gibson slammed his former colleague, saying he was not fit for lord mayor, a city council or a 21st-century society.

“Sadly, Basil has form when it comes to attacking and demonising the marginalised,” Gibson said.

“First it was the homeless, now transgender people. He has a track record of making hurtful, ill-informed comments, apologising for them and leaving irreparable damage in his wake.”

Zempilas was previously criticised after pledging to remove homeless people from the CBD’s pedestrian malls, partly because of “the smell”.

A controversial beginning

Eyebrows were raised long before this week about whether someone best known as a sports media personality should also wear the mayoral chains of Perth.

Zempilas has controversially chosen to continue his many high-profile gigs that include presenting AFL coverage, reading the sports headlines for Seven News Perth and writing a column in the state’s main newspaper the West Australian.

The only job he had pledged to relinquish was presenting his 6PR show from next month.

Many had predicted that conflicts of interest might happen along the way, but few had predicted a scandal this soon in his fledgling political career.

Zampilas now faces an uphill battle to undo the damage his remarks have inflicted on the already beleaguered City of Perth, which covers Perth’s CBD and surrounds and includes almost 29,000 residents.

A city engulfed in turmoil

Before this month, the City of Perth had been without an elected head since March 2, 2018 after scandal and infighting led to the suspension and investigation of its former Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi and the council.

Despite being found to have breached 45 local government laws over undisclosed gifts, at the time Ms Scaffidi denied any wrongdoing or that she had acted dishonestly.

Two years later, a $7.2m WA government inquiry, that was tabled in parliament in August this year, found a culture of self-interest at the City of Perth that allowed ‘greed, incompetence and mismanagement’ to flourish.

The inquiry listed sham leases, manipulated election processes, misuse of entitlements and conflicts of interest among a litany of inappropriate behaviour and administrate failings by city councillors.

The report made more than 320 recommendations, including a mandatory “comprehensive code of conduct for all council members and employees of local governments”.

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Following the council’s suspension in 2018, three government-appointed commissioners ran the city for more than two years, until elections were held this October.

Zempilas defeated six candidates to become lord mayor and has campaigned as ‘Baz’, a family man with three kids, since July espousing the need for a safer, cleaner and friendlier city.

He beat former journalist Di Bain to the top job by just 284 votes.

But, much like his first weeks in the top job, Zempilas’ campaign was marred by controversy when parts of an editorial he wrote for the West Australian on forcibly removing rough city sleepers were installed a bench seat by a guerrilla artists.

“The homeless need to be moved out of the Hay and Murray Street malls and the surrounding areas,” Zempilas wrote in November last year.

“Forcibly, if that’s what it takes.”

“The look, the smell, the language, the fights – it’s disgusting. A blight on our city and the single biggest impediment to progress and rejuvenation,” he said.

In what looks to become a habit, Zempilas was forced to backtrack on his comments, later saying he wanted to turn car parks into safe places for people experiencing homelessness and make the city a more welcoming environment.

In a bizarre end to a turbulent day, on Thursday night Seven News featured the story of Zempilas’ condemnation before crossing to him for sports coverage.