DURING the election and after, there has been some speculation and misrepresentation of the flyer I circulated throughout Gerringong and Gerroa in the last week of the council election campaign.
The group that I chair, Save Gerringong Action Group, was formed 16 years ago to retain the existing Green Belt between Gerringong and Gerroa. From that time on we have actively fought all attempts to threaten this existing Green Belt.
We operate independently of any political party. We have supported any group which reflected our values.
At the time our flyer was prepared and even after all of the "Meet the Candidate" meetings and most of the political material had been distributed, there were only two groups who had even mentioned this very important local matter - preserving the southern boundary of Gerringong.
By this time the Greens had already put out a flyer to state that they would fight to retain this Green Belt.
I repeat before my flyer was delivered, no other teams had mentioned this very important matter in any other media.
My group had originally been alarmed by the council vote taken on the Urban Strategy at the KMC meeting September 20 2011, details of which were publicly available for all to see on our council website.
My flyer was initially delivered with the name of my group, a PO Box, as well as a my shop's address and an email address.
The returning officer contacted me to say I was required to add my name as the person who authorised the flyer and details of the printer.
As requested, I recalled all undelivered flyers and added those details to make them totally legal. We then delivered the flyers properly authorised.
The Kiama Independent reported on September 19 that the flyer alleged certain councillors "would" extend the southern boundary of Gerringong. It simply stated publicly available details of previous voting patterns by Kiama Council. The flyer then requested that residents would "scrutinise the policies and party associations of the six candidate groups standing for election ..."
The same article suggested that the flyer was "anonymous" when in fact information at the bottom of the leaflet made it obvious where the flyer originated. The only problem was that the wording did not meet the requirements for material distributed during the election period.
Kent Ladkin
Gerringong
