Shellharbour City Mayor Marianne Saliba said she had not given any consideration to standing for Labor preselection for the state seat of Shellharbour, despite conceding she had been approached.
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‘‘There has been no preselection called for Shellharbour and I seriously have not given any consideration to it,’’ Cr Saliba said.
‘‘I’ve got a big job to do being mayor of Shellharbour and I am getting on with that job.’’
Cr Saliba held a previous incarnation of the seat, then known as Illawarra, between 1999 and 2007.
Before the 2011 election the current Shellharbour MP, Anna Watson, won a bitter preselection battle over Wollongong nurse John Rumble.
Ms Watson’s victory came about after a 20 per cent loading granted to female candidates was applied.
Mr Rumble won the vote by 54 to Ms Watson’s 51, but the loading bumped Ms Watson’s count to 61.2.
Meantime, Nowra pool campaigner Fiona Phillips has confirmed she will seek Labor preselection for the seat of South Coast to take on the sitting member and parliamentary Speaker Shelley Hancock, who has held the seat since 2003. Ms Phillips rose to local prominence during her ultimately successful campaign to save the Nowra Pool. Born in Nowra, she has worked in the banking sector, for community programs and as a strategic workforce planner at HMAS Albatross.
Late last year Figtree resident and long-term ALP member Paul Scully, who works as the chief operating officer at the University of Wollongong’s Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, announced to branch members his intention to run for pre-selection against Wollongong MP Noreen Hay.
